


How Akko Ruined Everything for Beach City

by KriegsaffeNo9, Zemyla



Category: Gravity Falls, Little Witch Academia, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol, Animal Death, Anxiety, Blood and Violence, Diamond Authority Are Bastards, Discussion of Racism, Drug Use, Garnet hates witches, Gen, Mildly Dubious Consent, Nightmares, Original Character(s), Overdosing, Panic Attacks, Philosophy, Self-Harm, Showers, Stevonnie goes to Luna Nova, Suicide, Swearing, cosmic horror, off-screen sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-06 21:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 84,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20298280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zemyla/pseuds/Zemyla
Summary: When Akko and Diana save the world and reactivate Yggdrasil, this surge of magic starts empowering Gem monsters, so the Crystal Gems have to send someone to Luna Nova to shut it down. Someone who’s both human and magic, someone who knows how to interact with teenage girls and who makes school uniforms look good.They send Stevonnie instead.Everything goes horribly wrong.





	1. Phallic Monsters DESTROYED By Lesbian Archers

**Author's Note:**

> This work begins, on the Steven Universe side, between “Letters to Lars” and “Can’t Go Back”, and on the LWA side right after the climax of "Tree of Leaves."  
But what of the other characters mentioned, from all their strange and myriad places? Ah, you'll see.

At half past two in the morning, Connie was lost to the depths of sleep. A dream swam around in her head – a memory of a trip to the UK last year. There was information for her, important stuff, world-critical stuff, and it was all lost the moment her mother kicked her door in.

She lifted her head from the pillow with the full strength of her body, feeling for a pair of glasses that weren’t there and which she hadn’t needed for some time. “Mom?” she said.

“World’s ending,” the good doctor said.

“Is it?” Connie said.

Her mother held out her cell phone. Live news showed a nuclear missile streaking through the sky. Connie squinted; the news ticker read PRUSSIA TARGETED BY NUCLEAR WEAPON – ALBION ORIGIN POINT. Beneath that popped up a personalized advertisement for shirts reading “I SURVIVED THE NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE IN BEACH CITY, DELMARVA”. The ones for Ocean Town were apparently on backorder.

“...wha?” Connie said. “Is… is it… viral marketing?”

Her mother pointed at a small news channel bug in the corner of the screen. Ah, the most trustworthy news network in the world showing video of a live nuclear missile streaking through the heavens. That was…

Connie heaved into her hand.

“Get dressed and get your sword. We’re getting out of here,” Dr. Maheswaran said.

* * *

Within five minutes the Maheswarans were packed into the family car, Priyanka at the wheel, pedal to the metal. Beach City on the horizon was aflame with terror and fire.

Connie hugged Rose Quartz’s sword. “Where are we going? What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to Steven’s, sweetie,” Priyanka said. “And Steven and his mothers and you can sort this all out.”

“You – you really do believe in us,” Connie said, and her heart… kept pounding at its accelerated pace, but more optimistically.

“We always have, honey,” Doug said, reaching to touch Connie’s head.

“Truck!” Priyanka said.

“Huh?” Doug said, and he and Connie lurched in their seats as Priyanka somehow managed to eke more speed out of the sedan, flying through an intersection a half-second before a flaming semi crossed.

Connie had something to say but it came out as a terrified squeal.

“I know I like to impress good driving manners on you, Connie,” Priyanka said, gritting her teeth. “But there’s a nuclear incident impending, so… needs must as the devil drives. Hold on tight.” She threaded the car towards the heart of Beach City as it had a nice, cozy preapocalyptic meltdown.

The devil was certainly driving at this point, Connie thought as she gripped the armrest with one hand and Rose’s sword handle with the other. It was just plain erratic, with no poetry to it whatsoever.

She then winced as her mom took a turn slightly too fast, and scraped the side of the car against the railing. Fortunately, its smooth curve stopped them from just plunging through to the darkened ditch.

“I’m going to call Steven, and at least let him know we’re on our way.” She pulled out her cell phone. “And where to find us if we don’t ma- HUH?”

The HUH? was her reaction to the phone going from her lock screen to a live video of two girls in white witch outfits riding a flying broom towards a giant, malevolent-looking missile.

“SONOFAHELL!” Priyanka was startled out of her grit-teeth concentration by the GPS screen showing the same video. She stomped the brakes and twisted the steering wheel, causing the car to spin 360 degrees with a screech of abused rubber, then come to a halt. “Give me my map back!”

Doug turned around. “What did you do, Connie?”

“Nothing,” Connie said. “But honestly, I wish I had been the one to stop us.”

Her mother also looked at her, with a dangerous look on her face. “And what do you mean by that?”

“It means that you’ve been driving safely too long that you don’t know how to drive unsafely, or at least not how to do so well!” Connie shouted as her tiredness and frustration came to the surface. “It’s not just about jamming the pedal to the metal and praying that it turns out okay! It’s about weighing risk versus reward in the split second you’re given, and deciding what to do, and being good enough to pull it off! And that’s clearly not something you know how to do!”

At the shocked and angry look on Priyanka’s face, Connie swallowed and said more softly, “I mean, you may know how to do it when you’re performing surgery, but not here, not now.”

Doug frowned thoughtfully. “This is something you’ve thought about before. How do you know about it?”

She was glad that she didn’t have to reveal Stevonnie with her answer yet. “Swordfighting practice. Against a larger foe, I might have to take hits to get close enough to strike soundly. I might have to calculate whether it’s worth getting my ear cut off to be able to stab it in the core.”

“Wait, if it’s worth getting your _ ear _ cut off?” Priyanka gasped.

“Yeah, what’s the problem?” she shrugged. “It’s not like I need it to hold up my glasses anymore. Besides, Steven can heal me afterwards.”

Her mom frowned. “That still makes me nervous.”

“It makes me nervous, too,” she admitted. “Speaking of being nervous, we should let Dad drive. He’s doesn’t need a GPS. He can just drive to the Beach City amusement park, then go down the beach towards the giant woman.”

Priyanka looked down at her hands, which were shaking with adrenaline and fear and anger. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said, and fumbled with her seatbelt.

* * *

Steven woke up to Garnet gently shaking him. “Steven,” she said, “get up and get ready.”

He was instantly awake. The quiet intensity of her voice could only mean one thing – a mission, an important one. “Where are we going?” he said as he rolled out of bed.

“We are staying here.” Garnet said. Her arms were crossed, her fingers drumming on her elbows. “It is coming to us.”

“What is?” he asked, but she was already hopping down to the first floor. Sigh, Steven thought, future vision stuff. He thought of getting a hold of Connie. He pulled out his phone, but as soon as he turned the screen on a video started playing. “What gives? This ad won’t turn off.”

“It’s not an ad,” Garnet said. She brushed her hand against an exotically-locked cabinet and retrieved dark bottles full of liquid from inside. No labels. Magic stuff? Garnet fetched a vessel from the kitchen and began mixing the mystical reagents to create probably a potion or something.

Amethyst flew in through an open window in owl form and hit the ground in her regular form. “There’s a car tearing ass across the beach,” she said. “And it’s not Greg’s van or the one with the giant head.”

“Uh…” Steven pondered. “Is it a convertible?”

Amethyst thought for a moment, then said, “Nuh-uh.”

There was only one car in his life it could be. “Connie!” Steven blurted. He leapt down from his bedroom floor and dashed out the front door, just in time for Connie’s parents’ car to skid to a halt on the slick sand. It was sporting a new ding in the side. Connie was the first one out, racing up the stairs to pull Steven in an embrace.

“Steven, did you see the news?” she said.

“That’s the news?” Steven said.

“Yeah. There’s been a nuclear missile launch. It’s the war to end the world.”

Steven had heard the phrase before. He’d seen plenty of post-apocalyptic movies and read plenty of post-apocalyptic comics and books. Funny that the end of the world was knocking at the door and it wasn’t a Homeworld project or a space monster on the other side. Just people. Human people who decided to close the book on Earth.

He suddenly felt very small.

Priyanka was hot on Connie’s heels, panting and bleeding from a scalp wound. “Hello,” she said, after catching her breath. “Is this where we save the world?”

“Of course,” Garnet said, holding out a fishbowl full of magic stuff, with a smaller glass hanging off the edge. “Scorpion bowl.”

“Thank you,” she said, and took the bowl in hand and drank half of it in one go

She then reached for the small glass, but Garnet stopped her. “Not yet,” she said. “You’ll know when you need it.”

Doug stepped into Steven’s house, looking lost. “Drink, hon?” Priyanka asked.

“I’ll pass,” he said.

“Good,” Garnet replied. “We need your hands steady. You have been trained in firearms.”

He thought on the statement a long moment. “Yeah, I am… I mean, I have been.”

He started to open the pouch with his revolver inside, but Garnet touched his hand. “No. Bigger.”

Just then, Pearl stepped in from the temple door. She had a gigantic rifle longer than she was tall slung over her shoulder. “I finally found it, Garnet!” she said. “Somebody thought it would look better under her bone collection.” She glared at Amethyst.

Amethyst rolled her eyes. “Look, I already told you, I’m going to make them into something! You know… later!”

Doug was staring at the rifle. “I don’t think I’m trained for this.”

* * *

Pearl performed a brief interpretive dance routine and projected a hologram of Beach City on the floor in the living room.

“The plan is simple,” Garnet said, pointing to the temple’s little image. “Amethyst will transfigure herself into a simple inflated airfoil…” A holo-Amethyst turned into something like a boomerang-shaped balloon. “...from behind which we will fire our laser light cannons for thrust.” The Amethyst boomerloon flew off on four glittering streams of laser lights. “We will maintain full thrust until we intercept the missile.” The hologram rotated until the nuke came into view. “Then – and listen carefully – Amethyst and Pearl will fuse into Opal. I will throw her at full strength in the missile’s path. She will use her longbow to deal crippling damage to the missile’s warhead or, if the situation is too dire, its fuel tanks, whereupon we will recover the falling projectile and turn it over to the most trustworthy authorities in the area.”

Doug raised his hand. “What am I doing at this point?”

“You will be keeping me in the air by repeatedly shooting the Boys.”

“And who are those?”

“The gun.”

“I don’t think that will have enough recoil.”

"Those aren't normal bullets," Garnet stated. "Instead of normal chemical reactions, it's propelled by a charge of Gem powder."

Steven gasped. "Like, from shattered Gems?"

"Nah, mang," Amethyst replied. "It's more like Gem placenta."

Pearl blushed and said, "I don't think that's an accurate ana–”

“Plah-cen-tuuuuuuuhhh,” Amethyst said, licking her teeth in emphasis. Pearl shuddered.

“Okay,” Doug said, wiping his brow.

Priyanka held out her fishbowl, now nearly depleted.; He took a delicate sip that nearly spilled the rest of it on him.

“So, I’m nine-tenths ready,” Amethyst said. “But, quick question, how are we gonna handle the whole… ‘landing’... thing? Like, when we’re done shooting and stuff?”

“Details,” Garnet said, gently patting Pearl on the head and shutting off the hologram.

Connie looked up from her phone. “So what about the witches?” she asked.

“The witches.” Garnet repeated. A hint of ice crept into her voice.

“Yeah.” She presented her phone. “There’s a pair of witches on a broom – they’ve been boosting it up after the missile. What if they stop it?”

“They won’t.” Garnet said. “They clearly don’t have enough velocity to catch up to it, nor sufficient weaponry to affect it even if they do catch up.”

“Hey, don’t be so down on them,” Steven replied. “Look at ‘em go! They’d believe in us, so I believe in them.”

His words seemed to reverberate for a moment.

“Yeah.” Connie said. “Yeah! They got this!”

“I sure hope they do,” Doug said, slumping against Priyanka, who nuzzled against him, blushing and faintly purring. “I don’t know much if anything about magic, but if the two of you believe they can do it, then I believe in them too.” All of them turned their eyes to Connie’s phone and its footage of the little witches closing in on the ICBM.

Across the world millions of eyes were fixed on the image of the witches flying in to stop the missile, and millions of hearts were fixed on the hope that they could do it – that they were close enough to stop the missile and save the world. The hope of a planet burned bright.

Garnet’s sunglasses slipped down out of sheer surprise, revealing her third purple eye.

“No,” Garnet whispered.

“No what?” Amethyst said.

“Garnet, you don’t think–” Pearl said.

The humans were gathered around Steven and Connie’s phones, watching the magic flight with full intensity. A faint green light began to emanate around them like an aurora.

“What the H?” Amethyst said.

“Steven! Connie!” Garnet said. “Listen to me!”

“I hear you loud and clear!” Steven said. “Look, they’re really doing it! They’re – wow, they caught up!” The glow around the humans intensified and filtered through the ceiling.

“We’re doing something – Steven, put your hands up to give them your energy!” Connie said.

After a moment Mrs. Maheswaran raised her non-drinking hand. Doug held up his rifle with both hands. Steven and Connie both held their free hands up.

“Steven Quartz Universe, you stop believing in those witches right now or so help me I will…” Garnet clenched her fist and struggled to think of an appropriate punishment.

“Garnet, please!” Pearl said, putting her hands on Garnet’s shoulder. “They don’t know! They don’t know what they’re doing!”

“What’s so wrong about this?” Connie said. “–oh my God, look! She’s – oh no, she’s falling!”

“Come on, other witch, you can do it–” Steven said.

“Woah!” Connie said. “It’s that magic broom that’s been flying around! The one that’s been in the news!”

“Pffft,” Priyanka said. “What a deus ex machina.”

“You don’t know that, hon,” Doug said.

“I’m going to take a walk,” Garnet said. She turned around and stomped through the wall, leaving a fairly large hole. “If we all die it’s not my fault!”

“Dude,” Amethyst said, sotto voce, “Garnet’s super pissed and it’s weird.”

“It’s… a long story,” Pearl said.

“When the hell is it ever not? Remember when all of this was simple? … You know, that one week two years ago? Now, what, Steven’s his mom who’s a fallen god or whatever and I’m haunted by the ghost of Biggie Smalls?”

“You are?” Steven said, looking up from the phone.

“I say it enough it’s gonna happen! You just watch!”

Pearl scooched up to watch the humans watching. The two little witches were soaring unfathomably high, unfathomably fast, the missile a protean nightmare rushing to engulf them. The witches were casting a spell through…

Pearl felt light-headed. “They can’t have…” she mumbled.

“Come on, come on!” Doug said.

“Give ‘em the business!” Priyanka said, hoisting her scorpion bowl and dropping it. “Whoops–”

Pearl dove to save the fishbowl just as Steven and Connie burst into cheers.

“She did it! They did it!” Steven said, hopping in place. “Come on, everybody, let’s see if we can see the thing!”

“What thing?” Pearl said, setting the fishbowl on the floor.

There was a collective rush towards the porch, and a collective raising of eyes towards the sky. The starry sky was alive with tendrils of green light sparking in the upper atmosphere, breaking apart into showers of color.

“Wow,” Doug said, softly.

Connie gnawed mentally on a feeling of familiarity, but her gaze was soon caught by Garnet on the beach. Her glasses were in her hands, all three eyes wide with shock and terror. Pearl was huddled against her, comforting her, but she looked as much in need of comfort as she did.

She nudged Steven and said, “The good guys won, they blew up the missile. Why do they look like everything’s gotten worse?”

Steven looked over, and sighed. “I don’t know, but if I had to guess…” His expression darkened. “It’s my mom’s fault somehow. Her closet has more skeletons than Amethyst’s bone pile.”

Amethyst barged into the conversation. “Hey, you take that back! My bone pile has the most skeletons ever! I beat that Shao Khan guy what’s-his-face, I beat those what’s-their-faces down south…”

“That’s not–” Connie started, but was interrupted by a rumbling beneath her feet. “–that’s not the missile, is it?”

“It blew up in space, didn’t it?” Steven, who was barefoot, said. “Last time I felt something like that was when a Gem monster was coming out of the ground.”

He stopped in sudden realization as Garnet put her glasses back on. “Gems, get ready,” she said. “The fight’s still coming to us.”

There was a brief pause, long enough to make the uninitiated think Garnet might be wrong, before a dragon burst from the ocean. And it was indeed a dragon, made of green glowing energy, 30 feet long and with a similar wingspan. The large irregular crystal, suspended in its middle like a fruit in a bowl of lime jello, was clearly its heart and source. It marched fully out of the water, then turned its face with cold robotic grace towards the temple.

Steven and Connie glanced at each other, not even needing words for this. They both produced their weapons, then their hands touched gently as they vaulted the railing of the porch

* * *

and I landed, catlike, on the beach, shield in one hand and sword in the other. No disorientation whatsoever. We are getting good at becoming me.

“Amethyst, Pearl, we need to attack its right side, to steer it!” Garnet called out. “Stevonnie, you make sure it doesn’t take to the air!”

Right. I’ve got the most aerial mobility out of us, so it’s my job to keep it from getting out of everyone else’s reach. I can do this. Jump, float, and spiked bubble, right in its likely flight path. It looked up at me expressionlessly before its attention was diverted by the other Gems’ attack. Amethyst snared its wing with one of her whips, while Pearl was peppering its head and eyes with spear blasts, which kept it from noticing Garnet long enough for her to lay a powerful punch to its torso. It reeled back, but then turned in a serpentine fashion and clawed at Garnet. Fortunately, she blocked with her massive gauntlets. She called out, “Its hide is tough! We need more force to penetrate it!”

Its gem glowed, and then a moment later so did its mouth. I’ve seen enough fantasy to know where that’s going. “Oh, no you don’t.” I said, and hamster balled my bubble downwards in mid-air, rolling like I was gaining speed on a ramp. With a substantial THUD, I rammed its head downward just as it fired a laser blast, directing it harmlessly into the sand.

Unfortunately for me, it was smart enough to keep some of its charge, as it whipped its head around and shot my bubble. It didn’t penetrate, but I was sent tumbling and flying back into the temple, making another impromptu door.

I dismissed the bubble, leaving me leaning on the counter. Momswaran and Dadswaran were looking at me from the couch, quite shocked.

Oh, right, they haven’t met me yet.

Mom’s eyes widened. “Woah, who’s the hottie?”

I felt a full-body spasm of disgust. “Mom, _ no. _” I planted my hands on the sides of my head, willing the harmony back in place by shoving that memory deep down to fester in silence ‘til the next time I had a bad-enough stability loss.

“...huh,” she said, and downed the small glass Garnet had set aside for her in one go. From over here, it smelled kind of like drain cleaner.

“Back later,” I said, and rushed out the hole I made, just in time to watch the dragon fire another coruscating laser blast at the other Gems. They managed to duck out of the way. The car didn’t; it melted and exploded at the same time.

I guess we’ll be getting a ride home from Dadniverse after this battle.

Fortunately, despite its obvious power, the dragon didn’t seem to have any grasp of tactics. It seemed laser-focused (sorry) at whoever attacked it last. Which meant that I was probably beneath its notice right now. I gripped Rose’s sword tighter, and Bismuth’s words came to my mind:

“It can cut through a Gem’s physical form in an instant! Destroying the body, but never the Gem.”

Gems don’t really have any vital organs besides the obvious one, so an attack on its tail should be as deadly as one to its head or heart. I dashed over while it was occupied, and sliced into it. The ancient blade pushed through its resistance, making it pop instantly!

...was what was supposed to happen. Instead, it chopped in like a carving knife into a ham, leaving a glowing wound on its rear which “bled” magic into the air.

I boggled. “What? That’s not supposed to happen!” This moment of inattention gave the dragon a chance to turn around in its own space, rather like a cat, and rush me with a flurry of bites and claw swipes. I blocked and parried as well as I could, but several near-misses left me bleeding, and I knew failing to stop it just once would leave me cut open stem to stern.

BANG!

The dragon was suddenly missing its left leg, which bled more magic from just below the shoulder. I looked over, and there was Dadswaran with the massive rifle Pearl had handed to him. Purple smoke curled from the barrel.

On the one hand, he’d never looked cooler in his life. On the other, he’d suddenly painted a giant target on his head. I had a brief internal debate on what name to call to him, then set it to the side and just shouted, “Watch out!”

The other Gems were on it, though. Garnet was directly behind the dragon, trying to peel it open through the wound I’d left; while Pearl stood behind her, jabbing and slicing with her spear to widen it. Amethyst had turned into her Purple Puma form, and gripped the tail in some kind of hold which would hopefully mean that it couldn’t just swipe Garnet and Pearl.

This meant that none of us were watching its wings, which is why it was able to leap into the sky and gain height, throwing the others off it as it did so. It banked around, and its gem and mouth glowed in unison.

An idea, perfectly formed, came to me. “Amethyst, Shiny Arc!”

Amethyst, thankfully, caught my drift, and turned to Pearl. “Fuse with me!”

Their fusion dance couldn’t have been more than five seconds long, but it was one of the most nerve-wracking five seconds I’d ever experienced. By the time Opal was standing there, the dragon was already diving back down at them, mouth loaded with deadly energy.

However, Opal had deadly energy of her own. Her bow was strung, and an arrow of glowing light was formed and let fly.

The arrow struck true, following the magical conduit that existed between the dragon’s mouth and gem. Its mouth closed, it had what I would swear was a look of gastrointestinal distress, then it swelled up and exploded in a shower of familiar green sparks. The large, irregular stone, now encased in a lilac bubble, drifted slowly to the ground.

“And now,” Opal said, “we can send it… off?” She stopped, because the bubble was bulging outwards; then it popped, and the shock caused Amethyst and Pearl to unfuse.

“Whaaat? That’s bull!” Amethyst shouted. “Gems can’t do that!”

“Obviously this one can,” Garnet said, and tried to bubble it herself; however, the magic pouring off of it kept her from even trapping it. “It’s still trying to form again!”

Pearl and Amethyst gripped their weapons tighter, but I said, “Maybe I can try healing it, like I did with Centipeedle. That might make it less aggressive.” I am so glad I didn’t have to explain that situation to myself.

“It can’t hurt,” Garnet said, and I took that as a good sign. My shield vanished, because I didn’t need it right this moment, and I licked my palm.

Huh, it tastes different from Steven’s. I’ll have to find out why, but later maybe.

I slapped the top of the glowing stone, and suddenly I was alone with it. The sand underneath was replaced by some sort of metallic stone or stony metal, and outside of a small circle of it everything was void.

“I’m probably dreaming with it,” I reflected, and then asked it, “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

It replied in a low monotone, “Objectives and priorities: Repair 5, Defense 3, Emplacement 2.”

“That’s not like any corrupted Gem I’ve ever met.” I said, half to myself.

“Unrecognized query.” was the response.

I rolled my eyes. “Describe Emplacement.”

“Objective: Emplacement. (1) Find highest local point; (2) Emplace upon it; (3) Enter dormancy until removed.”

“The lighthouse!” I exclaimed.

“Keyword ‘lighthouse’ recognized, matches candidate point at coordinates (43.114, 159.250).”

Most of the mystery about this had dissolved; now, it was time to wake up before the other Gems could do something like shatter it.

I opened my eyes, and finished falling to the ground; I was about halfway there already in the time I was in dreamland. “I know what it wants!” I exclaimed, as I stood up.

“What does it want?” Pearl asked.

“It wants to be at the top of the lighthouse. Well, I shouldn’t say ‘wants’, more like ‘was made to be’. It’s actually some kind of Gem tool, like Frybo.”

“If it’s part of Yggdrasil, then that can’t be safe,” Pearl said, and I was baffled. Was that something she had talked with Garnet about?

“It’s gotta be safer than constantly fighting a magic dragon,” Amethyst replied, and punctuated that statement by lashing some of the reforming magical body off the stone.

“Garnet?” Pearl asked.

Garnet shrugged, and picked up the stone to carry it up the hill. As we followed her, she said, “It’s not gaining magical mass as fast. It seems Stevonnie’s idea will serve for now.” Yes!

As we started up the hill proper, the gelatinous dragon body seemed to be evaporating even; by the time we reached the lighthouse, it was merely a large, glowing, hovering rock. Garnet ascended the stairs alone, and watching the green light appear in the top room jarred something loose in my mind.

“I know where I saw those girls in the video before!” I shouted.

Garnet jumped down from the top of the lighthouse, leaving craters in the grass at its foot when she landed. “Tell me.”

“About six months back, we were in Albion - I mean, Connie and her family were, because her mom had a medical conference. There was an event the one night all of us had free, the Enchanted Parade. It was supposed to be from some magic school for witches, Luna Nova. And there were a lot of special effects, like alive objects and this big giant minotaur guy-” A horrifying realization struck me. “Oh… was that real? I coulda been killed!”

Garnet placed a gauntleted hand on my shoulder. “Stevonnie, breathe. Remember what I said when you were six?”

* * *

“That witch in the movie sure is scary!” Little Steven said while watching one of the middle Wizard of Oz movies. “What happens if the good guys don’t stop her?”

“It’s alright, Steven,” Garnet said. “I killed the last witch with my own bare hands.”

“...uh…”

“Let’s watch the movie, Steven.”

* * *

“But – then how did those witches just fly and stop the nuke?” I dug around for my cell phone, which was presently a strange, misshapen glass and plastic mass which didn’t respond to my tapping. I remembered that my cell phones were two different types and sighed, putting it back. Fusion was complicated. “And the glowy stuff and the that thing? They even had a Sorcerer’s Stone at the Enchanted Parade!”

“If humans have figured out how to access gem technology to use magic… well, that’s, uh, that’s unideal,” Pearl said. “We have to find out more somehow.”

I fidgeted. “That’s great, but I still have to check on the other parents and explain stuff to them, so they don’t drink themselves to death. Bye!” I jumped off the edge of the cliff, slowing my fall to nothing as I approached the porch,

* * *

and Steven and Connie landed, with grace that couldn’t really be called “catlike”, but neither of them tripped over their own feet. “Mom? Dad? Are you alright in there?” Connie shouted.

“We’ll be fine in a moment!” Mr. Maheswaran replied. Doug had his shirt removed, and the blue-black of a bruise was starting to show on his shoulder around the bag of frozen peas Priyanka had placed on it. “It’s just that the gun had a lot more kick than I expected it to.”

Connie had already turned away and stepped back outside, deciding that, combined with the earlier awkwardness, it wasn’t worth trying to go in yet, but Steven stepped inside and licked his hand. “Allow me,” he said.

“Um, what are you–” Dr. Maheswaran replied, but Steven already pushed aside the bag of peas and slapped his wet palm on the bruise. There was a brief pause, a glimmer of magic, and then the bruise faded like it was never there.

“I’ve got magic healing spit,” Steven offered in reply, then passed Doug his shirt back and called out, “Connie, we’re done in here!”

“Of course you do,” Priyanka muttered.

Connie stepped inside and checked her cell phone. It was back to being a Just Peachy. “Okay… internet’s a-go… all the news sites are making smiley faces… yes, a cached version is just fine…” She held out her phone, showing the Luna Nova website. It looked virtually unchanged since 1995, a simple clipart witch .gif raining sparkles on an antique photo of a learning institution. One of the pictures was of the same kind of gem mega-device they had liberated from the dragon.

“Witches were real?” Steven said. “Witches are real! Garnet didn’t actually kill the last one!”

Garnet walked into the living room just as Steven said that. “Then it appears,” she said, drawing a gigantic and wholly mundane knife from one of her gems, “that I have business left on this Earth.”

“Woah, hey!” Steven said, waving at her. “Calm down a minute! Why are you so mean about witches?”

“Wild guess,” Connie said, “it’s got something to do with… all this! Can you tell us, Garnet?”

“If I must,” she said, lowering her sunglasses. Her eyes were wet with tears, all three of them, and she ripped open her skin-hugging bodysuit. Steven instinctively covered his eyes before Connie elbowed him; he peeked through chubby fingers and saw on Garnet’s featureless underbody a massive, animated tattoo of a burning skeleton impaled by a symbol of three arrows in a circle, surrounded by gothic script reading ICH BIN DER TOD ALLER HEXEN. “It all begins eight years ago…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first fanfic. I got lots of help from KriegsaffeNo9, though, especially during the long car rides we made to and from Memphis. He’s the one who encourages me to throw more drama and character/character conflict in, which is especially important when both sides of the crossover have valid points to make.
> 
> The next chapter is already written, but it needs beta reading and final editing. I should be posting it soon.


	2. That Time Garnet Tried To Kill Shiny Chariot And Almost Did

Garnet dismissed the hologram she projected from her gems. "...and that's how that happened."

Amethyst quietly hit "cast" on her cell phone. A YouTube video titled "Shiny Chariot Concert FAIL Fail Army Learn Colors" played on the TV.

* * *

Old digital camera footage played of a beautiful witch with brilliant red hair bombing super bad on-stage. As the heckling intensified, she unfolded her magic rod into a magic ballista and shouted something that Steven presumed was cool and significant. Presumed, on account of all the screaming drowning her out. Then a beer bottle struck her in the head from somewhere off-camera, throwing off her aim; the camera tracked a massive bolt of energy streaking from the ballista and just barely skimming the moon, carving most of a four-pointed star onto its surface.

The camera swung back, revealing the witch dropping her wand despondently as Garnet jumped on-stage. The crowds were silent enough for her declaration to be clear: "I'm gonna carve the soul out of you, hex-slinger!"

* * *

The video ended.

"Woah," Steven said.

"And then she got away," Amethyst said.

"The camera can't prove that, can it," Garnet muttered.

"Seeing as how, one, that witch is still alive-" she started holding up fingers, "-two, you didn't get knighted by the queen, and three, you definitely didn't have Peter Frampton and the rest of the Bee Gees with you-"

"Not for lack of-"

"Garnet," Pearl said, putting her hand on Garnet's shoulder, "I know why you're so worked up about it... but please, Steven and Connie and everybody needs you to be more calm."

Steven's dad walked into the room, stretching and yawning. "Ah, sorry, guys... it's been a long day, I totally conked out on the crapper like I'm eighty or something. What'd I miss?"

"The world's saved but Garnet wants to kill the people who saved it because witches are bad," Steven said.

"Huh," Greg said.

"What's so wrong about witches?" Connie said.

"Some people breathed too much dead gem powder and now all their future kids do magic with dead gems," Amethyst said. "Right?"

Pearl sighed and gestured for everyone to give her some room. "Yggdrasil," Pearl said. Her gem lit up as she began a well-researched teaching regimen, projecting a hologram of Earth with what resembled a tree made of green magic energy encircling it. "It was a system to redistribute magic around the Earth for more efficient use. Construction, information, the sort of things a growing colony needs. But it was never activated before the Rebellion happened, or so we thought."

The scene Pearl changed, to an enormous battle. "At the final battle for Earth, thousands of Gems were shattered." A shift again; now it looked like an educational video about human cells dividing, but there were tiny crystals growing out of the mitochondria. "The human beings who fought alongside us absorbed the fine dust of our dead, changing them at the genetic level. With the weapon of Corruption the Diamonds inflicted upon us, the dust came alive in their blood and gave them the gift of magic."

Doug looked worried. "You know, I think I breathed in some of the smoke from the magic bullet I shot. That's not going to have any kind of magic effect on me, right?"

"You had better hope not," Garnet said, and cracked her gauntlet-knuckles.

"_Continuing,_" Pearl said, hopping between Garnet and Doug. "The surviving humans left that benighted place, and bred with others, as humans do, and the power they gained bred true. It was small, fleeting power compared to a true Gem, but it was far more than their brethren could dream of. And seven hundred years ago, the greatest of these human witches activated Yggdrasil at last."

Garnet ground her teeth. "If Rose had let me handle the problem, we wouldn't be having this discussion."

"But she didn't!" Amethyst said. "She sent me! And I went in disguise, and sorta, you know, nudged them into the whole 'lock it up' thing instead of 'let's turn it all the way up' thing. And you know what? That worked just fine."

"Until now."

"With much less bloodshed than... otherwise possible," Pearl said, casting a glance at Garnet. "And regardless of how long it took or what we could have done otherwise, now we have to bring Yggdrasil back to its standby state." Pearl said. "The longer it's active, the more gem monsters will reawaken or be empowered, and more people will activate latent magic powers, and pure chaos will overwhelm the planet! And that's the last thing we need right now."

"So where's the lock we have to... re-lock?" Connie asked.

"It's not that simple." Pearl sighed. "If it were just a physical structure, we could have shut it down ages ago. But the Gem machinery designed to control the flow of magic was memetically encoded through the medium of-"

Blank stares.

"-ahem, it was transfigured directly into magic, and now it exists in conceptual form within Earth's biosphere. That's why Amethyst had to work with eight actual witches to seal it away. I hate to say it, but what we need now is information."

"You don't hate to say it," Amethyst said. "You love information. Doing all that research, then making your little presentations, and waiting for that moment where at least one of us 'gets it'. It's one of the things that makes you _you_."

Despite herself, Pearl smiled. "You're right about that part. But we can't just barge in full force. Connie mentioned something about a witch academy and parade. How many witches did you say were there?"

Connie shrugged. "At least a dozen students, plus some teachers. The two we saw were definitely there, but they didn't seem as friendly to each other back then."

"Well, that was one of the virtues that was needed to unlock the seal." Amethyst said. "_Phasansheer shearylla_. Ancient Gem language for 'The unity of people brings life to our dreams.' Rose suggested that one - our credo about fusion. The two girls may not have fused, but their hopes and dreams did."

Connie had pulled out her phone again. "It says on this page that there's 237 students and 28 teachers. Not an ideal student to teacher ratio... oh, an update! It says 'Applications for admission are now open!'"

"Ooh, send me again!" Amethyst shouted. "I could totally be a student!" She shapeshifted herself taller, with a skimpy schoolgirl uniform, and said in as sultry a voice as she could manage, "Hey, teacher~"

Garnet frowned. "It won't work."

"Yeah? How and why?"

"Their institutions are locked behind locational transit gates. The nature of their energies dispels our light. You'll be spat out as a gem bereft of form, helpless and awaiting destruction or enslavement."

"Aww, seriously? That's a sucky change from last time," Amethyst said as she changed back to normal.

Pearl added, "And, not to be critical of your acting ability, but if something should go wrong they will definitely have numbers and magic on their side. And they may presume you're an enemy, for reasons I cannot begin to guess." Another Garnet-ward glance; Garnet shrank into herself, pursing her lips.

Connie said, "I've been there before, but I don't have magic. Steven has magic, but it doesn't look like they take boys. We'd... oh."

She trailed off, and she and Steven looked at each other

* * *

and I said, triumphantly, "You could send me instead."

Momswaran looked over at me, and turned over her glass like she was trying to get the last few drops out.

Oh, right. That... exchange.

Dougdad looked over at us. "You two aren't going to get pregnant doing this, are you?"

I shook my head. "No, fusion doesn't work that way."

Amethyst jumped onto the table and said, "Yeah, that sword doesn't go into its own sheath." Pearl and Garnet started pulling her back down, and she shouted, "Hey, I've fused with Steven, too! I'm speaking from experience here!"

He pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. "I had thought of so many ways we were going to have 'The Talk' with you as you grew older. We thought of so many scenarios we'd have to cover. Needless to say, this wasn't in any of them." He blinked. "What do we even call you?"

"Stevonnie." I said.

"Lame," Priyanka said.

"Lame?" I said.

"Obviously, Connie was our choice for a girl. If you were a boy, we were going to name you Hector. And if you were something different, we were going to call you Ardhanari."

"We were very prepared," Doug said.

"So what's it like being you?" Mom asked.

"What's it like being Priyanka?" I said. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, and her eyes crossed like she was trying to look inside her own head.

"You have to admit, that's a very general question," Doug replied. "Existence and consciousness _are_ subjective concepts."

"Of course you take their side, Mr. I Got A Philosophy Degree To Find Cute Girls," Mom said. For some reason, it seemed like it should have sounded angrier than it did.

"Well, it worked. I found one." Doug planted a kiss on her cheek.

She blushed and said, "Oh you~"

I regretted absolutely everything from my births to now. "You know you could ask me more questions about what I'm like now!" I said.

"So where are Steven and Connie when you're you?" Greg asked.

"That's a fantastic question, thank you," I said. Greg bowed as I continued, "Well, it's not like _Dogcopter vs the Rift Monsters_. We aren't in giant hamster balls inside my head. It's more like Steven and Connie are my subconscious. They still exist, they're still thinking and communicating, but it's all sort of filtered through the lens of being me."

They looked like they weren't quite getting it, so I grabbed a tangelo from a bowl on the counter, and lobbed it at Doug; as expected, he caught it, then looked confused at it. I said, "Even though you were busy paying attention to me, your subconscious took control of your eyes and hand to catch that. For me, it's the same, but with actual thoughts and plans going on underneath, as easy as breathing."

Mom gave me a cool look. "Breathing isn't always easy. What happens when things go wrong?"

_She's dangerously smart. It must run in the family. Please don't right now._

I close my eyes, and there's a butterfly, made of our conflicting thoughts about Dr. Maheswaran - about Mom. I resolve that Steven and Connie should talk about this sometime later, and let it go into the distance.

Then I opened my eyes. "It's like when you're reminded that you're breathing manually, but worse." There were muttered curses by Doug, Greg, and (strangely) Pearl, but I continued. "It's thinking about thinking, and there's not enough room for actual thoughts. Whatever the trigger was fills our senses like a hallucination, and we desynchronize and unfuse. But I've been training with Garnet on how to handle intrusive thoughts which might cause that sort of thing, basically tandem mindfulness training."

"'Intrusive thoughts.' 'Mindfulness.' You've been doing your research."

"You taught me to do that." I said with pride.

"I taught Connie... oh, I see," she said. I wasn't sure whether she actually saw, but I was willing to take that as a win. "Anyways, carry on."

I nodded and said, "Well, what I was thinking is that I would get accepted as a student at Luna Nova, and then get close to the witches who unsealed Yggdrasil, with the intent of getting them to see the damage it's going to cause and seal it again. I can do this."

Mr. Maheswaran said, "But Luna Nova sounds like an exclusive private school, and with it becoming famous, there's going to be lots of admissions. How do we get to the front of the line?"

Mr. Universe replied, "Leave that to me."

* * *

The next couple days were logistics. And while there's a part of me that could tell you about that sort of thing for 50 pages, I'll just cut it down to the basics.

Greg called Luna Nova in private, and said that they should head over as soon as possible; even if it wound up being a "hurry up and wait" thing, it'd at least impress their sincerity/desperation on them.

Steven, Connie, and the three parents all had valid passports, because they'd all flown out of the country recently, so they didn't have to worry about that. This also dictates the travel arrangements, because I don't have a passport and thus won't be around until landing in Albion.

Greg told Peridot to run the car wash, and not to bust it up this time. She promised she wouldn't, but he looked worried anyway.

Dr. and Mr. Maheswaran had to arrange absences for their actual jobs, and for Connie from school. They said it was a family emergency having to do with the last time they were in Albion. And technically they aren't wrong.

I'd check in with the Crystal Gems every couple of days over the phone, and if we needed help, one of them would go to a warp pad that was relatively nearby and I'd meet with them outside the campus, while the other two stayed in Beach City to minimize detection.

The plane was a big, supersonic jet from Empire City to Towerham, first class. It was the most comfortable trip Connie and Steven had ever had, and certainly the fastest aboard any human-made vehicle. Connie read a book on various purported occult traditions, while Steven had a fantasy novel which was _supposed_ to help him with Albion customs but was probably about as much help as Golf Quest would be on a real course. At least it was entertaining.

And then they landed, with the usual rush of people collecting their bags and trying to get off the plane as fast as possible. As soon as they disembarked and had collected their luggage, Mr. Universe and Dr. Maheswaran and Mr. Maheswaran formed a semicircle around Steven and Connie, who clasped hands

* * *

and I was there again. Neither half of me had really slept that much on the plane, but I felt fully rested. Did our sleep combine, or did I just have more energy in general? I'd have to figure that out later.

Greg clapped his hand on my shoulder and asked, "How are you holding up, kiddo?"

"No problems." I replied, then my stomach growled loud enough for people nearby to glance at me. "Okay, one problem." I chuckled. "It feels like the last time I ate was on another planet."

Greg smiled. "You really are a teenager now. Anyways, let's get our luggage and rental, and then see if we can't find you an _authentic_ fish and chips place."

* * *

I may be spoiled by Beach City having the best fries (well, fry-byproducts--if you will, fry-products), but I can say with a decent certainty that...

Uh...

Well, we definitely had them.

"Maybe tomorrow night, we'll have curry," Mom said, prodding a limp filet wrapped in fake newspaper. "There was a really good curry place in Blytonbury, near the festival route. Do you remember that, Co- uh, Stevonnie?"

I nodded, and briefly wondered how Pearl would deal with it if Steven fell in love with curry while we were here. She liked pie, but (if you hadn't heard) pie isn't curry.

My phone (I'd gotten a new one for overseas use) _bleedled_ at me. I checked. "It's an email from Luna Nova. They want to see me tomorrow morning!" I looked up at Greg. "I thought we'd be here a couple weeks before they saw us! What did you tell them?"

"Oh, a little this and that," Greg said, wobbling his hand.

"You serenaded the witches, didn't you?" Doug said, lightly elbowing him.

"We've got a lot of driving to do tonight, then, don't we?" Mom said.

"And I'll take first shift." Greg added. "The food kind of energized me."

"I guess I have second," Doug said in a low voice.

"How about I do the driving?" I said.

All three of them looked at me as if I'd grown another head, but I hadn't, at least not yet. I started looking up directions to Glastonbury from our hotel.

"Sweetie, when did you learn how to drive?" Doug said.

I shrugged. "I dunno. It just sort of came to me. It's really kind of logical once you get behind the wheel and you know what all the stuff does."

"That's wonderful to hear," Dr. Maheswaran said, smiling only a little nervously.

"Well, the car's parallel parked pretty tight up front," Greg said. "If you can pull us out of that, then we'll let you drive. And then maybe us old-timers can get some sleep on the way."

My phone chirped: "GLASTON...BURY... TOR... is... TWO... HOURS... AND... FORTY-FIVE... MINUTES... away. THE USUAL TRAFFIC."

"Oh, huh," Greg said. "Right, we're not back in the states. Man, this place is tiny."

"Can we maybe get some curry now?" Dr. Maheswaran said, covering her food with a napkin. "I know that was all deep-fried, but I don't think it counted if it didn't taste like anything."

"There's a restaurant in the hotel," Greg said. "We can eat there tonight! It's one of those old-school tiki places. Been way too long since I've been there. Plus it's the favorite of that one writer lady, uh... the one who writes all those books about the--what was it called?"

"Nightfall!" I said. "It's not exactly my favorite, but--I'm sure she's got good taste in food!"

* * *

We did a little sightseeing after eating. Towerham is so old it's actually a little humbling. Not that I haven't been to places older, or known people older, but this place was old and built by _humans._ Dad--I mean, Greg-dad, specifically--he had a beer in a tavern that was older than my home country. Can you imagine that? The beer was newer than that, but still!

Greg sprung for a really nice hotel that had--well, we mentioned the restaurant. It was kind of like one of those seafood places with fun stuff on the walls, but the stuff on the walls was _really _nice. We shared piles of food that definitely tasted like food, and Dr. Maheswaran had three Zombies. Greg had to slip the waiter a little extra money to let her get a third, but her grumpiness evaporated and she got really, really friendly. Greg and Doug just shared a bowlful of some drink that had a little "volcano" in the middle that was lit on real fire.

Of course, I'm not old enough to drink back home, so I didn't have any of--

\--okay, maybe a sip of the volcano drink, because I can overseas, but just a sip, and I didn't drink any more than a sip. Definitely didn't impress both my dads and even my mom.

There was karaoke tonight, and Dr. Maheswaran insisted on doing some.

"Hon," Doug said, stroking her hair, "you're a champion at this, but are you sure you're good for climbing up onto something?" He waved at the two-foot-high karaoke platform.

"Babe," she said, kissing him--I felt a hot blush, though I'm not sure what part of me called that up--"I was drunker than this when we first met." She kicked off her heels, hopped onto the stage as casually as she might skip the first rung of a stepladder, and caught the microphone without looking at it. "Track 82-B," she said, glancing at the lyric screen, and then throwing off her jacket at it, covering it up. She shook her hair--not that she had it up or anything, but it really bloomed out like a head-cape behind her as the pounding drum line cued in.

[And then she sang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTYRzQbtTmY). And she got into it. Like, a lot.

It wasn't quite like a concert venue or anything, but... well, I guess people got a show with dinner.

Maybe it was the dri--the sip I had--but I had to excuse myself before she finished. I decided that, yeah, the pool sounded nice. Yes, let's go to the pool--

* * *

\--split back as Connie and Steven.

The tenth floor pool was deserted at this time of... early evening. The sun had just sank behind the horizon, little more than a red smear chased by the night sky. Treading water in the lukewarm pool, every noise faintly echoing off the tile and glass, it was easy for the first time all day to realize--

"Huh," Steven said. "I wonder if all that excess magic is gonna mess with the Cluster."

"The Cluster..." Connie said. "That's the one that will destroy the world if it wakes up, yeah?"

"Yup," Steven said. "It's napping in a bubble right now."

"...still napping, right?"

"Yeah. We'd know if it was waking up because... huh, actually, we probably wouldn't have much warning. It'd probably be like, 'hey, what's that shake,' and then--well, then we're all dead."

Silence.

Connie retched into her hand. "Oh man. Oh man. You should not have told me that."

"Nope," Steven said, paddling to the shallow end. "I owe you a drink."

"You just owe me Pink Stomach Happy," Connie said.

"That's a kind of drink!" Steven said.

* * *

They slept apart that night. Well, ostensibly, they slept. For the most part they watched late-night cartoons on the big-screen TV in their hotel room's living room while Dr. Maheswaran slept like a limp, rag-like stone in the grown-up bedroom.

Steven and Connie drifted off now and again, but only briefly. Steven kicked himself awake at the first hint of a dream; Connie simply couldn't force herself into a relaxed-enough state to do more than doze.

It so happened that everyone was awake well before sunrise. It was decided to get out of dodge and to Luna Nova before they had any time to think or doubt.

* * *

I was pretty ready to take on the wild roads of the UK, puttin' pedal to the metal, showing the locals the meaning of speed... but the roads weren't long enough. And they were too twisty. And it was pre-dawn. And it would be less than three hours to get there.

It was like driving through a cartoon by that one guy, you know the one. We edged by cities now and again, just barely getting a glimpse through the windows before the sight outside the windows returned to what it was for most of the trip: an endless world of moonlit green hills and ancient forest. It was still like a picture book, and just as dreamy. I'd never been here before--I mean, I think I'd have mentioned that earlier if I had--but I had grown up with so many books set in this place, or inspired by this place, or written by people who had long memories of this place and made worlds in its image.

We actually passed by Stonehenge. Dr. Maheswaran actually demanded we pull over and see it in person, as close as we were allowed to get. I felt a strange twitch of antipathy when I saw it through the binoculars the nice, curiously non-sleepy tour lady gave me; guess that's what a lifetime of associating "big stone construction" with "you are about to be smacked around by a monster." This wasn't Gemstuff, though; it was all-human, made with human ingenuity for human religion.

Try and take that from us, Homeworld. It's all us, baby.

After dad and dad had to escort mom back to the car--just a little spate of, what do you call it, that thing where you go to a place and it sort of picks your brain out of your head and puts it back in a little askew because it's so beautiful or meaningful--and the rest of the ride was...

...totally uneventful.

Yeah, sorry. No car chases.

And then we got to Glastonbury Tor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay. We promise that the next chapter won't take anywhere near as long.


	3. Passersby Were Amazed By The Unusually Large Volume Of Blood

The 'rents wound up falling asleep, one by one, after Stonehenge. Doug nodded off first, slumping against Greg; Greg put down his phone not long after and snored quietly, his head nested in the hollow-framed rest. Dr. Maheswaran was the last, and I didn't really notice until I found myself taking a too-sharp turn on a dark road and heard her briefly awaken before immediately going back to sleep in position, her head propped up on her hand as she leaned her elbow against the door.

[So it was just me and my own company for a half hour or so](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLmlxySOiM).

The moon was out of sight, concealed by clouds, and the road was empty. There were a few faint lights far off in the distance, but I'm not even sure if they were buildings or stars or ghosts or whatever. Without moonlight all the ancient forest and rolling hills were just black shapes outside the car windows, impressions of a world that didn't really feel real.  
The feeling was like seasickness in my head. The world I'd gotten used to, the world I'd finally begun to figure out kinda-sorta... I mean, my world has space aliens and science-magic and shapeshifting and monster fights, but now there were other people with their own monster fights and shapeshifts, and now that world might have pulled Earth's pin.

I turned the corner and there was someone standing in the road, right in front of the car and too close for us to stop in time. I slammed the brakes, the little rental car shrieked, and in the moment before we hit nothing at all I saw that

1) the person was faintly see-through, the dividing line visible through their head, so, you know, ghost, and

2) the ghost had not died a nice death at all.

I came to a halt in the middle of the road between two lanes. Nothing. The car was undamaged. No ghost in the car. Pretty sure no ghost in the car. Everybody woke up.

"...d'we hit somethin'?" Greg said.

"Ghost," I said. My breath came out in foggy gasps that clouded the windshield. I'd been running the heater for the past hour, so... yeah.

"Cool," Doug said, yawning.

Priyanka made a noise.

They were all back asleep.

A thin green jelly was smeared across the windshield. I hit the wipers and smeared the jelly into an arc-shaped mess on the windshield. I pumped the windshield wiper fluid switch and thinned the jelly into a distorted sheen on the glass, like looking through a messy burger wrapper.

I felt a tingle of disharmony, a feeling like paper being pulled just a little too hard, a little too shear. Steven and Connie's reactions to what just happened (running over a ghost at four in the morning in the UK after visiting Stonehenge and drinking half a scorpion bowl at Trader Vic's and then realizing the world maybe, just maybe, might could hatch like an egg with no warning at any time) were so violent and disorganized it could split me apart. At least they – we – I? – everything involved was so equally unhappy that the harmony kept going, sorta like an orchestra that's been told to freak out for effect.

So this is how Malachite felt all the time.

I caught my breath, and the fog stopped happening, and I turned up the heat and returned to my lane and kept going.

My phone sputtered back to life – oh, it went out – and after a few minutes of driving slowly it finally returned to the map. We were almost to Glastonbury.

Oh thank crap we were almost to Glastonbury.

* * *

Glastonbury, from the road in the middle of the ni- well, almost to the early part of the morning – looked like a quaint little storybook village for almost thirty seconds. At the intersection of Burtleigh Road and Tor View Avenue something flew out of one of the trees ahead and into the night sky, a burning light dangling from its chest. It made a noise like if thunder could feel pain.

A moment later, some other shapes flew up off the rooftops and at the flying thing. I puttered to a stop, waiting to see what would happen, and someone landed on the ground by the passenger-side window. Which, if you didn't know, is on the left in Albion.

He gently knocked on the window. I rolled it down. The man was nearly 6' tall. He wore a wolf pelt, though as I realized the longer I looked at him it wasn't really a wolf, but something wolf-like. As he went on, I further realized that it only looked wolf-like at first because it had a long snout, fur, and fangs. It was so distractingly off that he had to speak up to get me paying attention.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he said.

"Oh – sorry," I said. "And, uh, I'm not strictly a ma'am..."

He made an acknowledging noise. "Apologies. What business do you have here?"

"I'm –" I dug around in my pockets. "I'm here to go to Luna Nova. I just got admitted."

A small smile crossed his face. That was just about all I could make out under the not-wolf hood. "Good to hear. Are you armed? Is your wand charged?"

"I don't have a wand yet, sir."

The smile faded. "Go to the Triple Goddess Temple. Await instruction. We leave when the sun rises."

There was a distant series of pops, then streaks of neon-bright light in the cloudy sky.

"...shit. Good luck." The man knelt, then leaped into the air. It was then I realized that he had a scythe, the blade set parallel to the handle, in part because it whistled through the air as he brandished it.

I rolled up the window, then checked my phone, and tried to quell the feeling of unease as I looked for the temple on the maps.

* * *

The Triple Goddess Temple looked like a cute two-story house with crimson highlights and lots of waning-full-waxing moons and circles-with-three-inward-pointing-arrows and sticks-with-five-branches.

Good news: free parking.

Medium news: the temple was pretty much abandoned at that hour aside from a witch (with the hat and everything!) on the roof with a gun (an actual gun she was kind of pointing at the sky!). She was kind of far away so I didn't get a good look at her, but she was balancing on the peak of the roof pretty good.

Bad news: the temple was not good for my mood. And they didn't have coffee, and the dads and mom were feeling the lack of sleep. (Weird, actually, that the good doctor was feeling sleepless for all the sleep she'd gotten, but maybe the Zombies had something to do with that.)

So we sat in a little waiting room painted "video game level set inside a giant monster" red and adorned with images of a triple-faced goddess, and sometimes three goddesses. I had my bags with me, especially the large golf bag labeled GOLF BAG.

"So," Priyanka said. "No coffee in this place."

"Do churches usually have coffee?" Greg said. "I haven't gone since Sunday school. I just know they had donuts sometimes."

"This is my first whatever-this-is temple," Doug said. "Can't say I know too much about... this place."

"I ran over a ghost," I said.

"Cool," Greg said.

Priyanka grunted.

"It was the first ghost I've ever seen," I said. "I always knew ghosts were real but that was the first –" I felt a sudden violent disconnect. I crammed my head back together and panted. "Okay, so Steven always knew ghosts were real but Connie didn't and... now we've seen a ghost and it slimed our car."

Gunshots outside.

"And now some witch guys are shooting a monster that isn't a Gem monster," I said.

"This is pretty neat, right?" Greg said, giving me a gentle nudge in the shoulder. "Life experience! That's the third continent we've been to! I mean, you've been to space and the moon and Gemworld, so you're not exactly lacking in –"

"Maybe not now, dad," I said.

"Ah, sorry." He laughed. "Jeez, it's been weird, hasn't it?"

"Very." I rolled the golf bag around on its back wheels (for rolling).

The door opened (the door leading outside into Glastonbury, not deeper into the temple) and a nice lady in a tall pointy flight cap stepped in. "'Ey, guys," she said, in a strong American accent. "Pleased to meetcha. Adrian Nelson. I teach broomin' at Luna Nova and in my spare time I like to send motherfuckers to meet their god." She cleared her throat. "I mean... no, I meant what I said. Hi." She held her hand out to me, even though I was halfway across the room.

"Hi," I said, waving. I gave her my name.

"You're the new kid, right?" she said. "Excellent! You drove here, yeah? That's your slimy car out in the parking lot?"

"Well, a rental, but –" Greg said.

"Shhh, talkin' to the kid, guy," Adrian said.

"They're my kid..." Greg mumbled.

"Ours too," Doug said, defensively.

Dr. Maheswaran had fallen back asleep.

"Can you get it back to the rental place?" I said. "We gotta fly through the Tor, right?"

"Yes!" Adrian said. "Is what I'd normally say! But, ha,_ haha_, you do _not_ wanna be near the Tor, especially –"

The world shook and an awful noise that rattled my teeth split the sky. Oh, shit, the Cluster was awakening, we were all going to –

Adrian closed the door behind her, laughing. "Yeah, you heard why you don't wanna be near the Tor. You're driving through the delivery gate."

"You can drive there?" I said, disbelieving.

"You're going to want to drive there," Adrian said. "Every since Ygdrassil got all –" she gestured vaguely "– everything's been pretty fuckin' cool, but also there's monsters, like, _all_ up ins. It's kind of a huge problem, but hey, at least that bitch Croix ain't flingin' any more nukes around. So that's pretty great, yeah?"

I nodded. "Yes!" I sure hope that was the right thing to say.

"Cool. Get your shit in the car and get going to Gog and Magog and take the long way around, 'cause I gotta cram that bitch back in the Tor before he gets all the way back out again." She laughed. "Man... boy, that was not a good time..."

* * *

We piled in the car, Greg and Doug awkwardly carrying Dr. Maheswaran to the back seat. She was dead to the world, kept warm by a thick coat and her new I WENT TO STONEHENGE AND ALL I GOT WAS A PROFOUND SENSE OF ONENESS WITH HUMAN HISTORY AND THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT ... t-shirt.

I buckled up, set my phone into the phone holder thingy, and furtively tried to tell the phone where we were going and why. I looked out my window and saw the Tor.

The Tor was at the top of a tall, rolling hill, stately and dark. Its rectangular silhouette was broken up by trees growing from it. The first thing I noticed was that the trees I'd seen in all the pictures on the Luna Nova website were at least twice as big as they used to be, reaching for the sky and earth at the same time. The second thing I noticed was that something was... emerging from it.

It was near the base of it. There were little holes at the bottom for people to enter, I remember – you might know them as an invention called "a door." Something was coming out of the door. I...

Well, it's hard to describe. It was growing and billowing and beckoning. It was sort of like a fast-motion view of a tree growing, and kind of like a bedsheet billowing in the wind, and it was definitely beckoning, trying to get me closer. It wasn't a tree or a sheet or a hand. 

It had heads... I think it had heads... it had hands. I know it had hands.

There was a voice in the back of my head.

_You like to be touched. I can touch you. It will feel good, and you can rest._   
_Come closer, steven/rosequartz/connie. You won't have to worry anymore._   
_It won't hurt._   
[ _I love you._ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eogPq7nnvwo)

Greg covered my eyes. "Get moving, kiddo," he said. "And don't be slow."

I pulled out of the parking lot and sped down the tight, narrow streets as fast as I dared, looking away from the Tor – harder to do with the driver’s side facing it. But there were sounds of battle now, more distant gunfire and what I guessed was the noise of battle magic going off, and now and again the horrorroar.

The noise of the thing made me feel small. Like how the nuke made me feel small.

There was a route that went by the tomb of King Arthur and Egg Rock, but it was also much closer to the Tor, and I didn't know if the Arthur magic would cancel out the monster magic. It was just twelve minutes to get to Gog and Magog the other way around, anyway.

Just twelve minutes of driving through the pre-dawn town through ghost-choked streets with winged things in the air, singing and screaming.

I really wished I'd gotten my sword out of the golf bag before getting in the car.

We made it to the trees in about fifteen minutes – on account of not wanting to slime up the windshield even more – breaking out of the town and into a deserted stretch of road driving past what I guessed was like a little micro-town right next to Glastonbury. Great green columns of light were closing around the Tor, so I guess that meant the witches were winning. Green was kind of their color, but then, it was also (as the movies and also the recent accident had taught me) the color of ghost guts, so I didn't even really know at the time, but anyway –

We drove past a detox clinic and plowed into a place that maps told me was good for "glamping." There were no cars, no people, and especially no glampers in sight, so, hey, at least I could drive past the fancy cabins and outdoor hot tubs without fear of hitting someone.

And we were there, at the two ancient oaks, stout as barrels. Their branches grew together into an arch; a thing that looks pretty much like what you'd expect a gate to look like, and it was green, so that was another check in the "green is a good color" column. I backed up on a broad road that pointed directly at the gate, revved up, and drove in.  
We drove through a swirling green tunnel of light. It was less dazzling than it should be, probably because of magic, and the further in we drove, the further the monster at our backs felt. I mean, that's how distance works, but...

Look, it was a really messed up morning, alright?

"Man, today sucks," Doug said, breaking the silence.

"Hey, it's just the first few hours of the day," Greg said. "We have time to improve."

"Please, any god that's listening, make this day turn better in the back half. ... back... three quarters. Whatever."

I felt a funny stirring in my belly. It wasn't the feeling of terrified semi-harmony from earlier, or the sound of the Tor-thing, but more like when Steven pushed his way out of the Gem prison on Jasper's ship. It was more pleasant than some ways to get poofed, and a much more pleasant sensation than most of the sensations from the past morning, so I took it. I didn't split, so I had to be doing something good.

We were only in the tunnel for a few minutes. A blotch of darkness, imminent-pre-dawn-colored, waited for us at the end of the tunnel.

I held my breath. "We're almost there," I said.

I heard Doug stroke my mother's hair, a soft noise audible just above the heater. She'd slept through the entire mess. Lucky her.

Then we emerged from the tunnel, and neither the pictures on the website nor the exhibit at the festival in Blytonbury [did it justice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTVHxS-c7sU).

It was shrouded in fog, and all its lights - the blue-white of the lamp posts that almost looked like there were fairies inside; the yellow windows, some with moving silhouettes, maybe of the students who were getting ready for the day; the red of the dawn, very late at this latitude; and the green of the Sorcerer’s Stone, which surveyed the campus from its towering perch - were all captured by that fog, stirred together, and sprinkled on the entire scene like fairy dust.

There was a voice from somewhere not too far away, playful, bright, inviting me to –

* * *

"Back up! Back up, yo!" Akko said.

The car didn't back up, and so Akko, in flying elephant form, bounced off the hood. Her last hit point gone, she returned to human shape, hit the lawn, and skidded a few meters down. She propped up on her less-hurt arm and brushed grass from her cheek. "Oww," Akko said.

She saw that the hood of the car had been smashed into the ground; as she watched the back end flopped back onto the ground, the engine block and front wheels entirely severed from the vehicle. "Oww," Akko said. "That looks really expensive..."

The monster she'd been fighting advanced towards the car. Not quickly, but it was.

"Oh, dang it!" Akko said, clenching her wand in her teeth and sprinting to the vehicle. She went for the front door and ripped it open with a burst of super-strength that had been coming in quite nicely since the whole saving-the-world incident last week. "Come with me if you wanna –"

"I'm going, I'm going!" the tall person inside said, unbuckling their seat belt. "I need to get my – [oh my God what is that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRU6GnETSN4)?!"

"That" was one of your standard-issue katthveli. You know the kind – looks like an elephant seal had a baby with a saber-toothed Sphynx cat and it's also bigger than a school bus. It flopped across the school grounds, mewling hatefully (like a Sphynx cat) and looking utterly disgusting (also like a Sphynx cat). It had whacked Akko halfway across Luna Nova with one grotesquely smooth whack of its scrotum-textured tail.

"It's cool, I got it," Akko only partially lied, jumping onto the destroyed engine block. "Stand back and let me shoot it with witch las –"

The new girl(?) jumped onto the car and pulled a pink, rose-patterned shield from his(?) belly button. Oh, wait, from a magic jewel in their (let's go with that!) belly button! With a small grunt they jumped into the air and flung the shield at the monster. The shield bounced off the katthveli's nose with a soft bonk and a "mreh!" of displeasure from the monster; it flew back into the new g... the new person's hand.

"Holy crap," Akko said, "are you the real-life Winter Soldier?"

"Maybe!" the new person said.

The rear door opposite the katthveli popped open and two men with a very asleep woman in their arms emerged. "You kids got this?" Greg said.

"Totally, sir!" Akko said, saluting. "Just give us a sec and we'll sort this right out."

"Cover me, I'm getting my sword!" the new guy ("guy" is gender-neutral, right? right?) said, sliding down the back windshield and going for the trunk.

"Covering!" Akko said. "_Fusilo_!" She pointed her wand at the aggressively-flopping katthveli and sprayed a stream of tiny bursting streaks of light at the beast, discouraging it from moving forward. She tapped her ear with her free hand, because Constanze had hooked them up with a new chatty talky comm system like the cool guys in the movies all had. "Guys, are you inbound?"

"More or less," Sucy said. "Buncha byakhees got us all distracted. Keep getting tangled in my hair. Monsters are stupid."

"Don't I know it," Akko said, waving her wand to try and increase the spread of fusilo bolts. The katthveli was closing in, gritting its oversized teeth and gaining speed. "Can you get out by the delivery gate in, like, ten seconds?"

"Nope."

"Dang it," Akko said.

The new kid threw a hamburger-shaped backpack back along the road, then yanked a majestic straight-saber from a golf bag, which they also threw aside. They posed before the katthveli, brandishing their sword. “Stand down!” they said.

The cat monster mewled at them.

“Alright, we’re doin’ this the hard way!” they said. They raced across the lawn, shield raised, brandishing an enormous pink saber at the massive, gaping pussy.

"Phraaaasing!" Lotte shouted from halfway across the campus.

The New Kid leapt into the air over five times their height--nice!--swinging their bigass sword right through the monster's neck. They then bounced off the monster's neck and onto the lawn, as if they were expecting to go straight through a solid mass of monster. Which would be ridiculous. That never happens. That said they stuck a superhero landing, so that was cool.

"Uh – hey, nice witch person, the monster's not poofing!" the new kid said.

"Not what-ing?" Akko said.

The katthveli looked very surprised. Its head drooped, then popped off, and thus hundreds of gallons of high-pressure monster blood burst from the stump directly at the new kid, knocking ‘em on their ass and drowning them in a brackish red swamp. The decapitated body then aggressively spasmed around the lawn, but away from the car and more at the forest, which was nice.

"Nice!" Akko said, hopping off the car and skipping over to the new kid. She waved her wand in front of her, casting a simple cleanup spell so she wouldn't get her new shoes messy. "You okay? I don't think this thingy has poison blood, but I could be wrong, but Sucy's on her way, so –"

The new kid sat up, opened their eyes, and screamed in terror. "Blood!" they said, bolting upright and furiously wiping their face, shaking their head so hard Akko could practically see the smears of two smaller heads like a weird cartoon trick. "Blood! This is blood! Why is there so much blood?!!"

"Woah, woah!" Akko said. "Lemme get you real quick! _Recurer_!" She swished her wand at the new kid, and a blue light alit on their head and swept down their long, leggy body, cleansing them of blood. "There you go, much better." She held her hand out.

The new kid stared at their hand a moment before taking it. They weren't too heavy, Akko thought, for being so big. Once they were on their feet – bare feet, Akko saw! Maybe introduce her – him – stick with "them," Atsuko – introduce the new kid to Wangari, see if they can bond over the no-shoes thing –

"Hello?" the new kid said, again.

"Wha? Oh, hello!" Akko said, smiling. "I'm Atsuko Kagari. I go by Akko! I kinda saved the world last week? Might've seen me on TV or your phone?"

"I did," the new kid said, dumbfounded. "Is this what it's always like in magic school?"

"Every gosh-darn day," Akko said, starry-eyed.

The new kid turned green. "I need to siddown..."

"How 'bout in the car?" Akko said, gesturing to the totaled car.

The car exploded.

"That wasn't me," Akko said.

"Oh, dammit, the luggage!" Doug said, running for the flaming trunk.

"The – oh, right!" Akko said. "Let's help."

"Yeah... yeah," New Kid said.

* * *

The rest of the nice witch girl's friends showed up not long after. That was good. That was decidedly good for my nerves.

Akko, that was her name. She was a cute witch in her lateish teens, a big, goofy smile plastered on her face, her eyes jewel-red, two locks of hair tied back into a sorta hair-blob thing. She was keeping a lookout for monsters, so she said, and keeping conversation going while Diana fixed our luggage.

"So, what's your name?" Akko said.

"Stevonnie," I said.

"Cool! Neat." Akko gave me a quick bow. "And here comes Lotte!"

Low-tuh was a Finnish girl. Her blonde hair was in a dainty pixie cut, her eyes hidden behind giant coke-bottle glasses. She had a giant thermos of coffee with her and handing out mugs of coffee on floating saucers. "Sugar? Cream?" she said. "I have half-and-half if you'd like!" She held out small bottles of creamer and a sugar shaker.

I poured cream and sugar into my cup. "Thank you!" I said.

"The first night we went out to fight all these monsters, we fell asleep on our feet," Lotte said. "We're not making that mistake again, lemme tell you!"

"Remember when that thing with the eyes tried to crawl in Akko's mouth while she was snoring?" Sucy said. “Sunday was great.” She was a Filipina in a long-skirted uniform, her skin unnaturally pallid and shiny and her limp indigo hair combed over one eye. Her exposed eye was half-lidded and heavily painted with ashy-purple eyeshadow, the iris warning-sign red. She had just been poking around the exploded car, loomed around and smirking with a mouth full of teeth like razors.

(Teeth like Farty Marty's, I thought at first. Marty's, though, were broad and serrated, like a shark's; Sucy's were smaller but very even and plentiful, like a salamander's.)

Last but not least was the other worldsaver witch. Her hair was blonde but streaked with locks of a blonde that verged on a pale green. Her eyes shone blue; her expression was measured and imperious, and her beauty was…

...well, she was very pretty.

Very pretty.

Diana, that was her name, she was busy casting repair spells on their luggage, piecing things back together. "There," she said, tapping Greg's duffel bag. (It was actually Steven's Hot Dog Duffel Bag, but I was already taking Cheeseburger Backpack, and it would be greedy to hog both superior inventory systems.) "Your luggage should be back in order."

Greg unzipped the bag and pulled out a T-shirt. It said BON JOVEY: IT'S IS MY LIAF. "Hey, that's... pretty close!" he said, turning it around to reveal it was mated to a shirt that read WHITE'S NAKE: HERE I'M GO AGING. "Which is nice, because it was a pile of ash a minute ago! Thanks a lot, Di. Can I call you Di, or is it weird?"

"It is a little weird," Diana said, nodding.

"Yeah, stupid to even go there." He flapped the shirt in the wind. "How's your stuff, Doug?"

"Just fine," he said. His luggage was highly robust, downright tacticool, and had weathered the explosion... just fine. A little dented, let's not kid ourselves.

"Now," Diana said, "let me gather a little mana and I'll get to repairing that car."

The car's remains caught further aflame and melted into nothingness.

"...and nevermind," Diana said, sighing. She pressed the three-pronged fork of her wand first against her wrist, held them there a contemplative moment, before moving the tines onto the cuff of her uniform sleeve and collapsing the wand into its handle. "I'm sorry, sir."

"It's fine, I'm rich," Greg said, waving her off. "You've done plenty for us already."

"Yeah," I said. "Thank you. You're... this is what magic can do, huh?" I felt a great big smile cross my face. The sense of wonder was starting to crawl back, to dislodge the gnawing fear of

(_I love you_)

...other stuff.

"This and more," Diana said. "Welcome to Luna Nova. I'm afraid I didn't catch your name?"

"Stevonnie," I said again.

She curtseyed. "Well, your appointment was for today, as I recall, but I'm certain we can move it to tomorrow, give you time to settle in and rest after that untimely encounter."

"Ah, we've encountered worse!" I said, planting a hand on the golf bag. I’d ditched the cover for now, so the handle jut out the end "I bet we can knock this out real quick! And then we can nap."

"Or continue napping," Sucy said, poking Priyanka.

Connie's mom was asleep on her feet; she bobbed just a little when Sucy touched her, like a nudged punching balloon.

"Look at her go," Sucy said. "Ain't nothing getting her out of Dreamland. Lucky sucker. Were that we could all just go back to our rooms and have a--"

Priyanka opened her eyes. They were now solid white.

"Ha, called it."

She floated a few inches off the grass, her hair billowing behind her. "Here..." she said in a voice that wasn't her own. "Here, at last. After so many years..."

"Aw, snap!" Akko said. "Did you guys drive into No-Face Nancy?"

"...that's actually her name?" I said, drawing my sword again.

"Well, it's what I call her," Akko said.

Diana flicked her wand back open.

"Wait!" Doug said. "Please, she's my –"

"Yeah, we know," Sucy said, slithering in front of him. She had locked two potion bottles together spout-to-spout and was shaking them like a bartender with the bartender shaky metal cup thing. "Hey, No-Face. Can you say 'agalaophotus' for me?"

"What?" the ghost in Priyanka said, turning mid-air to face Sucy.

Sucy swung the bottles away and gallons of pink glop sprayed from both potion bottles like little palm-sized hoses. Connie's mom was soaked head-to-toe in an instant, and she flopped out of the air as the ghost filtered out of her; Doug caught her before she hit the ground, and as the ghost coalesced, Akko and Diana zapped the crap out of her.

"Lotte, bring 'er on home!" Akko said.

"Tripartite soul of the dead!" Lotte said. "For as you were born with one soul and gained a second at –"

The ghost howled a spine-chilling invective that sent Akko and Diana skidding away. Diana locked her knees and leaned into the wave of unseen force; Akko stumbled over her own feet but kept upright and kept her wand aimed at the ghost.

"Fast version! _Fast version_!" Akko said.

I leapt forward and lunged into the air, thrusting Rose’s sword at the ghost.

Well, it felt like a good idea at the time.

The sword didn't pass clean through; it hitched at the hilt, hanging me in mid-air. Akko and Diana cut their attack spells and gave me and the dead person some face time. The ghost stared at me a moment before it swelled up like a badly-inflated balloon and exploded into a wave of green slime. I hit the ground in a sticky mess. Sucy, Akko, and Diana were caught in the explosion’s epicenter as well; everybody else made it out with a little bit more dignity.

"Oh, God," I muttered, spitting out ectoplasm. It was thinner than what came out of Peridot’s robonoids, at least.

"Oh, goddammit," muttered Doug, trying to rub his eyes clean on his sleeve. He held his glasses out to try and drip the goop off of them.

"_...main goo ke saath kyon tapakata hoon?_" Priyanka mumbled as she crawled back to consciousness. She looked at her hand, which was dripping with two shades and viscosities of glop, with a detached curiosity. I tried not to look down at her too much. Things started to feel weird in my mind when I did.

“_Yah tumhaare lie ek achchhee lag rahee hai, beb,_” Doug said, patting Priyanka's head.

"I got something for this," Greg said, stepping in with a giant towel made from a bath towel partly fused with a beach towel. He draped it over Priyanka, frisking her hair with the towel to start working out the slime. Doug grunted, though I'm not sure why.

Well, that was one other thing Rose's sword could do. I flicked slime from it onto the grass, then sheathed it in the golf bag again.

"Yeah," Akko said, patting me on the back, "that's why we like to bind 'em instead of kill 'em. Uh, again."

"Additionally," Diana said, and Sucy put a slime-covered finger on her lips, to her consternation.

"Shhh," Sucy said. "Let's just enjoy this moment... just us, and the slime."

"Please no more slime," I said.

Sucy loomed close, and whispered in my ear,

"_Pussy_."


	4. 1 Weird Trick To Get Your Hair Clean After Prolonged Existential Crisis

We were stuck on the lawn longer than I'd hoped for what Diana called "standard cleanup protocol." The witches (except Sucy) were quick to help us with plenty of the cleaning spell, but…

“Dang, man!” Akko said, slapping her wand against her palm. “This just does not want to get you clean.”

“In all fairness,” Sucy said, “I brewed the psychomagnetheric ghost jelly to be extremely difficult to clean. You know, so it can work its magic without getting interrupted.”

“Well,” Lotte said, returning her wand to her belt, “that’s thoughtful of –”

“Like napalm,” Sucy said. She whistled a few bars of a song I didn’t recognize.

Dad – Steven’s dad – didn’t have much luck with the mutant towel, and neither did Doug when he took it out of Greg’s hands and got a little more forceful. “It’s fine,” Dr. Maheswaran said, gently batting at the towel. “I’m just glad to not be possessed.” She shook her head, her long and matted hair flinging droplets of goop around, and feeling hot and strange I turned away and got a good look at a grown-up witch.

She was a little bit taller than my mom – I mean, Connie's mom, specifically – so still a lot shorter than me. She looked stern, sharp, and already annoyed.

"Good going, Ms. Kagari," she said with some effort. "This was a little gorier than your usual efforts."

"Oh, that wasn't me!" Akko said with a dismissive gesture. "That's the new kid. Stevonnie! Whose last name I actually haven't gotten yet!"

"Oh, uh," I said.

"That'd be Universe-Maheswaran!" Greg-Dad said, blessedly, stepping out in front of the ‘rents. Doug draped the towel around Priyanka’s shoulders. “This is my lovely wife Priyanka and our handsome husband Doug.”

“I _did_ marry her first,” Doug said, patting Priyanka’s shoulder.

“I’m a doctor, by the way,” Priyanka said, faintly miffed. “Of medicine.” She straightened her shoulders and stood up straight, attempting dignity.

"Greg Universe-Maheswaran," Greg said, holding out his hand. Finneran regarded it for a moment, retrieved a handkerchief, and shook his hand with that. "You may have heard that fast food jingle I wrote. It was all the rage on the internet!"

"I’m certain,” Finneran said, regarding her handkerchief with disgust. As she attempted to fold it back up with the sticky parts inside, she continued. “A doctor of medicine, you said? I see you’ve met Ms. Cavendish. Her family are some of witchdom’s finest healers. If you have the time to talk, I’m sure it would be most elucidating.”

"I'll keep that in mind for later," Priyanka said.

"Of course," Diana said.

"It’s clearly been an exceptionally long morning for all of us," Finneran said. "How about we discuss the account of your– your child – over breakfast? We have excellent coffee in the teacher’s lounge.”

"No coffee," Priyanka said, looking at me quite firmly. "It'll stunt your growth."

I laughed a little. "Mom, I'm six-foot five and also magic."

She started to say something, saw Finneran, and said, "We'll discuss this later. … Perhaps after a bath.”

“Oh, we can handle that with a little magic,” Finneran said, smiling. “Why don’t you –”

“We've tried, Ms. Finneran,” Diana said, firing cleaning sparks at me. They rebounded off my shoulder to no effect, as they had earlier.

Finneran blanched. “_Mother Mormo_. Alright… instead, I’ll lead you to the finest showers on campus. Take your time, I am under no duress today.”

“Wait, we have good showers?” Akko said. “Like, good-good?”

“You’re saying there are ‘bad’ showers, miss…?” Diana said.

“It’s – a complex affair,” Finneran said. “The business of running a witch school is –”

Akko tugged on the corner of her mouth, pointing at one of her teeth. “Come on,” she said, “you coulda told us before I lost a dang tooth!” She tapped the tooth. “I mean, Sucy witched it back in… eventually… but that bathroom fistfight was a _bloodbath_, yo!” She spat. “Also this slime tastes awful.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sucy muttered.

* * *

The word spread quickly, starting with one of the cyclopes that knackered the kathvelli and _swooc_ing through the entire school before it was seven o’clock: there was a new girl in school, a rich American who was seven feet tall and had a sword.

At least, most of the rumors said "girl." There were a couple of "boy" rumors, too. Some said that she had a gun instead of a sword, or that he was wearing really really high heels to give the impression of being a giant, or that since Sarah Bernhardt was no longer the tallest girl in school (at a measly 5'8" in comparison) she would be expelled out of a cannon into a wall. Sarah denied this, being the first student outside of Akko and company to actually see the new kid. She was just going to talk to the new kid later. Just her and them, alone, talking, one tall to the other.

Sarah, thus, must be the lighthouse cutting through the fog of rumor with the harsh light of truth. Follow her, and all things would be alight.

And that was why Wangari, school reporter, kicked in the door to the second-story Fifth Bathroom. “Luna Nova News Network!” she shouted, striding in. “Chief reporter Wangari Wanjiru reporting –”

“Jesus Christ!” what was definitely an adult man with a mane of receding hair shouted as he bolted into a shower stall. This bathroom had actual stalls, albeit without doors. “Do witches not knock?!”

A man of Indian descent, very much an adult man, was in the middle of lowering his pants. He looked over his shoulder, looked away again, and pulled his pants back up and ran into the stall opposite the first man. “Please leave before we’re all arrested.”

“Can I ask a question please?” Wangari said.

“No,” the adult men said.

“Not even about the –”

“No!” they said in unison.

“I’ll have you know I’m eighteen years –”

“Still weird!” they said.

“Okay,” Wangari said, “aborting mission!”

“Aww,” Kimberly, her mousy camerawoman said.

Joanna, her dour stenographer, grumbled, as was her idiom.

The three slipped out of the bathroom. “Dammit!” Wangari said. “You said that the new girl was in here!”

Sarah Bernhardt looked up from her seat across from the bathroom. “I said that the new kid’s parents, who are not the new kid, were in that shower. I told you that the new student, who, according to their social media presence, identifies as intersex and prefers ’they’ pronouns, was in Private Bathroom 3. That’s on the other side of the hall. Those two girls who are Diana Cavendish’s roommates got beaten up there a few months ago. Remember?”

“Don’t get testy with me,” Wangari said, wagging her microphone at her. “Jo-Jo, Kim-Kims, let’s roll.”

“Yes ma’am!” Joanna said.

“Ehh,” Kimberly said.

Sarah looked down and resumed grinding her scissor’s blades on a whetstone.

* * *

At last, Doug and Greg and Priyanka were alone.

It had been a long time since Greg had been to a school shower… or a gym shower, for that matter. The plain cream tile was yellowed with age, the walls a streaky green, the antique plumbing scrubbed meticulously with what Doug presumed was sorcery due to a lack of rust. Priyanka was at the far end of the shower, struggling to peel off her clothes and refusing help. Greg was faintly relieved; so was Doug.

“Are we alive?” Doug said after a long pause. “Or did we go from a horror movie to one of those awful Anglish sex comedies?”

“I don’t even know, man,” Greg said. He leaned against the cool tile of the shower stall. “I’m tired, I’m sticky, I’m dropping my kid off on another continent to… stop the apocalypse, again… I’m totally out of it.”

Doug thought a moment. “Well… I’m dropping my daughter off, too. Because some space aliens said it was the right thing to do. And I can’t close my eyes without seeing… the… the thing from the--”

“Yeah,” Greg said. “It's gonna be rough for both of us, huh. Is this your first time dealing with magic stuff?"

"Not the first. I haven't had a lot, but it's not the first."

“Here's hoping you don't have much more magic stuff to go before we get home,” Greg said. “Besides, the hard part’s done Or the worst part of the hard part. Now we can just concentrate on getting clean and--"

Priyanka stepped between them. She had finally gotten nude, her impeccable body shining with dripping pink slime. “I’m going to be honest,” she said. “I thought I could get myself clean, but… no. Doug, could you help a girl out?”

“O–of course, hon!” Doug said.

“And Greg,” she said, turning to look at Greg. He saw Doug over Priyanka’s shoulder, his expression going from delight to horror. “You used to play rock and roll, right?”

“Famously, yes!” Greg said. “Or, well, I think I’ve told you before.”

“Right – my hair has never gotten this messy before. But you’ve been there, right? The, ah, ‘rock and roll’ lifestyle? Can you help with…” She held up a limp, slime-drenched lock of hair.

Greg continued looking at Doug; Doug now looked at Greg.

“Truce,” Doug said.

“Truce?” Greg said.

“Understood,” Doug said.

“I… think that’s a yes?”

“Thanks kindly, boys,” Priyanka said, with a little smile.

* * *

Diana knocked on the door to the private bathing room.. “Hello?” she said.

“Just a moment, goddamn!” someone said inside.

“Just a moment,” Diana smiled. “And I do believe that sounds like Amanda, a good friend of Akko’s. She’s…” She smiled, or attempted to. “A handful. She’s a handful.”

“It’s alright,” I said. I held the Cheeseburger Backpack by the strap with Rose’s sheathed sword; I didn’t want any of the stuff stuck on me to get on the bag. I was afraid my entire morning wardrobe was gonna be a loss, at that.

“I’m sorry your first impression of Luna Nova was so – busy,” Diana said. “Everything has been so…”

“...crazy,” I finished.

“If you must.” Diana dug her fingernails into her palm at the base of her thumb. “It’s been a long and trying year.”

“I saw you save the world,” I said. “I can believe it.”

She blushed. It was fetching. Why was I thinking all these things…? “I suppose I did, didn’t I?”

“I mean, there was a nuke, and then there wasn’t one, and we’re all still here, even if there’s a bunch of monsters around, so – yeah, you saved the world.”

Her blush faded. She stared off into the distance, unfocused. Her mouth was a flat line, like a video game character that had all their expressions turned off. I knew that look well; Steven and Connie had both seen it in the mirror not infrequently.

The door opened, saving us both. A young woman stepped out – I mean, obviously, like, amazingly obviously was it a young woman – but even that idea hitched in my head when I saw her. She had two-toned hair, brilliant red up top, blazing yellow beneath. Her eyes were green like the shallows of Beach City in late spring when it turns warm enough to swim. Her uniform’s shirt was half-buttoned; I caught a faint glimpse of a binder. She(?) smirked at me. “Eyes up, babe.”

“Uh –”

“Amanda, please,” Diana said, blinking rapidly. As if she remembered she belonged back in her body.

“Yeah, yeah, give the newbie some space,” Amanda said, walking backwards down the hall. She idly began to button her shirt as she did. “Which is gonna be hard given the whole –” She gestured over her head. “You know, half-giant thing. See you, new kid.”

“See ya,” I said, and the burning strangeness in my chest and head and face and everywhere stepped up to an inferno. I could feel disharmony start to creep into the edge of my vision. “I really need to shower like right now,” I said, and sped into the bathroom, the Cheeseburger Backpack slipping off the edge of Rose’s sword and plopping on the ground outside.

I closed the door behind me, rested against it, then opened it again. Diana nudged the backpack inside. “Shower well,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, locked the door, and stumbled into the bathroom.

There was one bathtub with a showerhead, a little side room, a rack of assorted logs to our left, and us. At last, alone, again. So we let the disharmony –

* * *

– tear Steven and Connie apart. They landed elegantly, each on one knee, and, taking deep, slow breaths, began to panic in earnest.

They couldn’t be very loud, or they’d give away the secret; and so on that floor Connie talked into her knees and Steven muttered into the warm wooden floor, almost kissing it. They went on for quite a while, Connie in particular about the blood, God, all the blood, and Steven about the thing in the Tor, the shape of it, the awfulness of it; the peaceful feeling of that beckoning.

For long minutes they ranted and writhed and when all words had failed them they lay on the ground beside each other, pale and sick.

Connie swallowed a nasty bout of acid reflux. “I’m gonna need some water…”

“I need some water, and hot chocolate, and a hot bath, and a playlist of Sugartime Squishies episodes, and I need to go to bed curled up on Lion so I’m –”

Silence.

“Did we forget Lion?” Connie said.

* * *

In Beach City, four hours in the past, or so it would seem to Connie and Steven, Lion curled up to sleep on Steven’s bed, for he was not there to tell him no. Downstairs, the Crystal Gems were planning.

* * *

“I think we did,” Steven said. “Boy, I wish he were here right now.”

The side door was opened. There was a little on-fire thing inside of it, maybe the size of a baby doll. “Hey,” the little on-fire thing said. “I’m the bathroom fire spirit. It’s not my business to tell you to not freak out on the floor or anything, but I’m a busy guy, and I could really use some firewood, and you guys can, like, freak out on your own time in the shower. Alright?”

“...okay?” Connie said. “Should we get out of your way?”

“Oh, so you didn’t bring any of your own?”

“Nobody said to…”

“Of course they didn’t. Thankless buncha pointy-hat sonsa…” He jabbed a fingerless limb at Steven. “You owe me one, buddy. You remember that.”

“Okay,” Steven said. “Guess it’s shower time.”

* * *

The water took a minute to turn from cold to blistering hot, and then a comfortable heat, one that did not bite. While the spirit adjusted the temperature, Steven and Connie stripped on opposite sides of the tub, climbed in back-to-back, and sat below the cascading shower. They sat for a while, letting the water sluice down their tangled hair, their slime-slick skin and aching muscles.

“So,” Steven said after a lengthy interval of silence. “How long has it been since we got here?”

“Hmm…” Connie said. “We got here early in the afternoon… we went to bed… we woke up early… we drove a few hours… got to Glastonbury before daybreak… and it’s early in the morning now… so it’s about eighteen hours.”

“Cool. So I can say ‘today has been weird’ and really mean it.” Steven lathered up his densely curly hair. Short as his hair was, it was always a bit of an effort to really get it clean and conditioned – just another gift from Rose Quartz, he supposed.

Connie leaned forward; he felt her spine press against the softness of his back. She sighed, tried to speak, and let the words falter. She scrubbed her dark skin until the soap in her hand slipped free of her fingers and clattered into the bathtub. She rinsed until she could no longer imagine the film of slime clinging to her arms. She touched her temple, gently pressing her fingers into her hair, and prayed that she had not gotten as much ghost blood in her hair as she was afraid she had.

She took a lock of hair in her hand and squished. She took her hand away and saw a dense web of ectoplasmic strings, tinting the water green. She moaned. “Agh, damn it…”

“I heard a curse word,” Steven said, not judgmental, not even all that surprised.

“It’s that kind of a day,” Connie said.

“The hair, right?” he said.

“Yeah… the hair.”

“Hang on. I’m gonna need to move very carefully. Don’t look behind you.”

Some would say it was an unnecessarily prudish course of action, given that for days at a time they had inhabited the same body, lived the same life, shared memories and skills and reflexes. But there was a whole different level of intimacy with two bodies compared to one. Connie had wondered, now and again, if she and Steven would always fall into fusion when they got too close, and there were times she was deathly afraid that her and Steven could never have something approximating a normal, human, relationship.

Not for the first time she wondered about the ins and outs of Gem anatomy, and if she could ever get the courage to ask somebody. Probably Garnet, she realized. Neither Pearl nor Amethyst or… definitely not Peridot or Lapis… would give her anything like a useful answer.

Steven crept across the tile, little splashing footsteps giving away his position as he went for the backpack and rooted around as gingerly as he could with sopping-wet hands. He hummed as he slipped back into the bathtub behind her. “Okay, close your eyes, I’m about to clean your hair.”

She leaned forward but rolled her head back, her short hair pooling about her shoulders. There were times she missed her longer hair, but here and now she’d amputate it all if it meant getting the ectoplasm out. She could survive wearing the  _ Alien 3 _ look, she decided.

She heard more than felt Steven dole out shampoo and conditioner (she presumed) onto her head, then he worked them into a thick lather within a few seconds of careful massage. He worked out the tangles, worked out clots of slime that refused to wash away, and used a Lil’ Delinquent Folding Comb With Real Spring Action to comb her hair out smooth and get the mix nice and deep into her hair.

Soon Connie sat in a more comfortable pose, facing a little more forward, and let Steven tend to her. It had been a long, weird day. She desperately needed a little creature comfort.

* * *

Greg sprayed a two-ounce shot from three different containers into the bucket of water Dr. Maheswaran rest her head against. The second, anyway; the first had clogged up with green film pretty much instantly. “The patented Universe hair-rescue cocktail,” he said. “Never cross a state line or US border without it. Good for gum, peanut butter… et cetera…”

“Mm,” Priyanka said. She was lying in a bathtub built into the floor, one that had aspirations of being a hot tub before cruel reality or budget cuts, a form of cruel reality, had cut them short. Doug was in the bath with her, having done the bulk of helping her wash up in the shower earlier and refusing to leave her side through the hair-washing process.

Greg cracked his knuckles and plopped Dr. Maheswaran’s hair into the bucket, then swished the mess around, massaging the combo of shampoo-conditioners into her scalp. “Just lie back and think of… I’m not sure what to suggest here, actually.”

“‘Nothing’ sounds fine,” she said. She took her husband’s hand and squeezed tight. “I could do well thinking about nothing. It’s either that or how I’m going to clean my new Stonehenge shirt.”

“Ah, I got stuff for that, too!” Greg said.

“Just another party-hard rock-and-roll lifestyle lesson, huh?” Doug said.

“Oh, no, something I figured out back when Steven was about three or so. When you’re the guy in a metal band your hair is way more important than what black logo T-shirt you’re gonna be wearing. On the other hand, if you don’t have a clean shirt at the car wash, people are gonna think, ‘why doesn’t he just walk through once himself?’ Obviously the answer is that the – you know, maybe I’m blathering.”

“Blather away, please,” Priyanka said. “I need the distraction.”

“Well!” Greg said. “Raising Steven taught me a lot of things about… a lot of things. It was rough going… really rough going. But I had the Crystal Gems, you know, once they got settled down about Steven, and, well… Beach City’s a wonderful place.” He realized that he had looped a lock of Dr. Maheswaran’s hair around his first and second fingers, the way he used to when he cleaned Rose’s hair, and a strange feeling clenched his heart. Part of it was shame. Part of it was longing. He didn’t feel like naming the third petal of this particular bloom.

He gently unspooled her hair and continued cleaning, pinching around for those sticky little globs that just didn’t want to come out no matter what.

The good doctor sighed, and Doug put his cheek against hers, and she snuck a hand onto his ass, squeezing firmly. She smiled and whispered into his ear.

She didn’t seem overly concerned with him being able to see all of this. That… was for the best. Definitely for the best.

Let’s get her hair cleaned, Mr. Universe, and we’ll worry about all the rest later.

* * *

“We have your hair cleaned,” Steven said, gently patting Connie’s head. “So we can worry about all the rest later!”

“Yeah,” Connie said, more of a sigh than a word.

Steven put his hand on her shoulder; Connie put her hand over his, running her thumb up his wrist, feeling his pulse. The feel of his heartbeat under her thumb was…

Maybe don’t think about it too hard.

(Her heart was beating so fast. She was warm, flush. Hold me, Steven. Just hold me a while. Let’s be together here while we can be together and… and just ourselves…)

“We should probably finish up,” Steven said. “The nice witch lady said we didn’t have to be fast, but I don’t wanna make the spirit guy mad.”

“Yeah…” Connie said. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

Steven smiled and put his head on hers. Connie giggled.

“[Here comes a thought](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iiRUs1oLZk),” Steven sang.

“...that might alarm me,” Connie sang.

“What someone said, and how it harmed me…”

“And oh,” Connie said, looking back at Steven. By necessity she had to twist her waist. Just so… “I’m losing sight. I’m losing touch.”

“All these little things…” Steven said, just a little off his game, a little surprised.

“...seem to matter so much,” Connie sang.

“That they confuse you…”

Connie stood up, gracefully, still holding his hand. “And I might lose you.”

Blushing, soapy, they put their foreheads together, and sang:

“Take a moment to remind yourself

To take a moment and find yourself

Take a moment and ask yourself

If this is how we fall apart…”

* * *

“But it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not, but it’s not,” I sang.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…

“We’ve got nothing, got nothing, got nothing to fear.

“I’m here. I’m here…”

I knelt and began to rinse my hair. Something I did alone; and which I did together. It was not human intimacy, maybe. But it was intimate. And he is with me, and she is with me, and we are here, and I am here. Two lives, three lives, one life, suspended in amber.

“I’m here.”

* * *

Wangari skidded to a halt in front of the private bathroom. "Diana Cavendish!" she said. "We're here to--"

"I will pay you in champagne to not bother Stevonnie Universe-Maheswaran after their shower," Diana said, twhipping her wand ready. "_Libamine._" A bottle of Henriot Brut Rosé disappeared from the wine cellar back home in Edinburgh and appeared in her free hand, which she held out to Wangari.

Wangari huffed and took the bottle. "This isn't a bribe," she said. "This is for services rendered."

"Of course," Diana said, urging her along.

* * *

Finally, a while later, we all met back up in the faculty lounge. It was about nine in the morning.

The faculty lounge was what I guess most school faculty lounges are like. It was poorly-lit, it smelled like cigarettes and alcohol, and school papers and books were piled on every available surface. Finneran cast a spell to levitate books and binders from one of the tables onto another table which already had a mountain of stuff piled onto it. While we took our seats she stepped over to a dumbwaiter – an actual frigging dumbwaiter – in the wall.

“Anything you’d like for breakfast?” she said. “Any dietary restrictions?”

The ‘rents mumbled amongst themselves and worked out an order. “Uh,” I said, thinking hard about what I could use, and said, “Do you have breakfast tacos? I could use a lot of breakfast tacos. Or… British breakfast tacos. Breakfast kebab?”

Finneran shrugged and jot our orders down on a little pad, then set it inside the dumbwaiter. She knocked twice and the dumbwaiter slid into the dark, spookily. “Shouldn’t be long. Headmistress Holbrooke shouldn’t be long, either. Let us take a rest.”

We all took our seats, me at the far right end of Team America.

Finneran thumbed through my papers. “Hmm. Stevonnie,” Finneran said, “it says here your magic talent began to manifest when you were twelve?”

“Yeah,” I said. “About then.”

I realized I had not actually spent even a second of thought on how I’d pretend to be a witch. I gave a nice big smile and figured I could wing it. It couldn’t be that hard. I can lie when it’s necessary, right?

“That’s an uncommon age to develop talent. Why haven’t you attended magic schooling until now?”

“Oh, well,” I said, “I was…”

Doug cleared his throat, then visibly hesitated on his next word. “Our – child – was a late bloomer. Sh – Stevonnie didn’t really take off until the big thing happened last week, and then Stevonnie just started… oh, blooming all over the place.”

Finneran nodded… and smiled a little bit, an expression that didn’t sit easily on her harsh face. “Kagari said you slew the kathvelli. Are there an abundance of monsters in Beach City?”

“Well!” Greg said, “We’re a half hour’s drive from Ocean Town.”

Finneran pursed her lips. “Hrrrm. So not exactly a quiet little backwater. Alright then.” She glanced at the golf bag. “I didn’t get a good look at the sword. Do you know who forged it?”

“Oh, we found it,” I said. “In a cave.”

She squinted. “Well… ah… just be careful with it. You’ll be pleased to learn that we have extracurricular support for swordsmanship. We claim a few highly-skilled student fencers. You’ll be in good company.” She tapped the pages even and set them on the table. “I see nothing in your papers that would disqualify you from entrance to Luna Nova. In two days we’ll put you through a battery of tests to determine your placement and then you can begin remedial classes to prepare you for the new semester in the fall.”

“...Is that it?” I said.

“Yes,” Finneran said.

“Phew!” Greg said. “I thought you’d wanna do a blood test or something.”

“Hardly,” Finneran said. “Heredity only goes so far. Personal ability and capacity for learning is the true measure of a witch. From what I’ve read here you are potentially quite a prodigious talent. It pleases me to welcome you to Luna Nova.” She tried to smile wider, and more naturally. It only confirmed she didn’t do a lot of smiling.

“...do we shake hands now?” I said.

“If you were so inclined.”

“I am!” I said, and stood up. Finneran stood up and held out her hand; American-style, I took her hand and shook not-terribly-hard.

The dumbwaiter clattered to a halt. “There we go!” Finneran said, opening the dumbwaiter and revealing a small, blue-haired girl clutching a science-fictiony-looking gun to her chest.

“Constanze,” Finneran said.

Constanze made a little noise.

“False positive,” she muttered, closing the door.

My stomach roared.

“It’ll all be fine,” Finneran said. “Maybe you’d like to rest after all that adventure. We’ll get your food to you in no time.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” I said.


	5. Investigative Journalism 101: Never Stop Running, Never Stop Firing, Never Burn Money

An enormous, bearded, blue cyclops led me to my room, and a pair of goblins led my parents to theirs. It was a cozy little room--no bathroom, but a pitcher of water and a clean glass on the nightstand, and a standing fan that slowly shook its head at me as I hung up Cheeseburger Backpack and placed Rose’s sword below it.

I’d hardly begun to settle in when I heard a knock at my door. It was a service goblin with a full English breakfast. I settled on my bed with the serving tray in my lap, looking at a pile of thick-cut bacon, sausages, toast with marmalade, beans (?!!) and fried mushrooms and some kind of other meat I couldn’t immediately guess, plus an egg, and thought, there is no way I’m gonna be able to put this down after all the stuff I’ve been through this morning.

I ate it all in under ten minutes, washed it down with black tea without even thinking about how bitter it was, and then peeked outside my room to see if there was anybody I should be alerting as to what to do with the tray.

I just put it down outside my room, went back inside, flopped onto the bed--my feet jutting out a good foot or so out--and closed my eyes. I thought about… something… and in seconds I was asleep, dead to the world.

* * *

It was six in the morning in Beach City in Steven’s living room.

“Man,” Amethyst said. “Now that Steven’s in another country, I can swear as much as I want.” She kicked back on the couch, nesting in her enormous hair.

Garnet, sitting next to her, waited for a few moments. “I’m not hearing any cursing.”

“You gotta save it, man,” Amethyst said. “If you use it too much it dilutes the impact. You know? Or you gotta use so much that you start to lose track of it.”

“Mm.”

The sound of a default text alarm interrupted the horrifically banal conversation.

“Ah!” Pearl said from her seat at the counter. “It’s from Greg! Everybody’s safe and sound at Luna Nova…” She scrolled down. “And here is a picture of everybody eating their breakfast… and here is a little goblin giving a backwards ‘peace sign’… goodness, there’s a lot of photos…”

Peridot rushed into the temple, an armful of printouts under her arm and Pumpkin nipping at her heels. “Crystal Gems!” she said, rushing to the coffee table. “The library was very forthcoming with supplying material for printout and larger computers for more convenient computing! Also, we now owe money to the library for all the printing.” She spread out maps and charts, carefully lining them up for effect. Pumpkin ran around in wide circles, for she had the zoomies something fierce.

“I’m waiting,” Garnet said, crossing her legs.

“Just… one… moment…” Peridot said. “The numbers around the world are in keeping with my mathematical models! The subjective numbers are where it gets interesting. In particular, there are some fascinating developments in the pacific northwest around the Zone We Politely Try To Avoid For Fear Of Hideous Death.”

“Please don’t call it that,” Garnet said. “The proper term is the Seal of Dreams.”

“Well, that’s an accurate description of the zone and why we don’t go there…” Peridot said. “Anyway. Most of the world is reporting an enormous increase in monster sightings, attacks, abductions, et cetera! The exception is the area within the Zone That’s All The Things I Said It Is, where sightings have taken a dramatic decrease.” She scritched under Pumpkin’s chin. “ It’s pretty mysterious, but I have a few  _ very _ long-winded hypothesese..”

“The Seal of Dreams was dangerously heavy with mana before,” Garnet said. “Now everywhere on Earth is dangerously heavy with mana. Things which could only survive in the Seal of Dreams are now free to wander.”

Peridot furrowed her brow. “...hrrrrmn… no, that explains everything. Dang it!”

“What about the Seal of the Library in Australia? The Seal of the Tomb in Antarctica? All of New England, especially Baystate?”

“No increase, no decrease,” Peridot said.

“Then the rest of the old seals are holding. For now.” Garnet stood up. “I’m going outside to get extremely high. I’ll be back when I am able to speak coherently.”

“We’ll wait for you,” Pearl said.

“That’s unnecessary,” Garnet said. “It will take a while.” She jumped up to Steven’s bedroom, collected the box with Cat Steven in it, and exited through the window to the roof.

“I had such a good hypothesis…” Peridot said. Pumpkin whimpered and licked her. “Aww…”

“I certainly hope a little smoke-out will improve her mood,” Pearl said. “Things have been so dire lately, the last thing we need is Garnet in a piquish mood.”

“Peekish?”

“Oh, your internal dictionaries don’t have that defined?”

“I absolutely have it defined,” Peridot lied, hoisting Pumpkin into her arms. “I just couldn’t determine the spelling of the word you used, briefly interfering with my ability to discern verbiage!”

“I… trust you,” Pearl said. She looked down at her phone. “Maybe I should talk to Amethyst about this..." She held out her phone at Amethyst: "I don't suppose you'd like to help me figure this thing out?"

"Sure thing," Amethyst said. "Come on, we're gonna need to change your phone's background first, and I got a little studio set up for it."

Amethyst rolled off the couch and headed into the temple; Pearl was right behind her.

“Just you and me, Pumpkin,” Peridot said. “Against the world…”

Pumpkin yipped and wagged her tail.

“Yes, Pumpkin,” Peridot said, “I miss Lapis too.”

* * *

Garnet set Cat Steven’s box by the dryer and took a seat at the edge of the temple’s palm. She conjured a blunt from her sapphire, lit the end with a kiss of flame from her ruby, and inhaled, slowly, holding the smoke inside her until she felt it begin to take hold. It was her own strain, named for the Gem who taught her that her life was not just worth existing, but worth celebrating.

The weather was beautiful. But at the edge of her perception, maybe imaginary, was the faint hum of the Sorcerer’s Stone in action, raining an excess of mana unto the benighted Beach City. She extinguished the blunt with her sapphire, then returned it to storage. “Cat Steven, I can trust you with a secret, right?”

Cat Steven was curled up and asleep in his cardboard box, curled up around a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel.

“Right. You’re good at this. So I’ll open with the worst part:

“I’m terrified of losing Stevonnie. Witches are vicious, and the part of Stevonnie that is Steven’s, well, they want to believe the best in everyone. With Homeworld and the Diamonds, it’s almost admirable to respect the people to whom you are opposed. But witches are not merely dangerous, they’re predatory. If Stevonnie isn’t careful…”

She held her hand just above Cat Steven, unwilling to pet her and bring her to cruel waking. Sleep was the only protection against despair in these benighted times. And even then…

“We have passed beyond the limits of the coffee spill, Cat Steven. We are in places I could not imagine, against a foe I had thought I’d laid fallow, in a world that is straining to break aeons of safeguards as its magical energies burst free. If the Seal of Dreams cracks open… anything else could follow.” Old names burned in her head, names learned when she was a solitary Sapphire with no dream of fusion. “Stevonnie is amongst witches, in Lloigor country, and my future vision shows only fog.”

She lay on the stone hand. Cat Steven turned around in her box.

“I need to believe in Stevonnie,” Garnet said. “In a way… I do. They will survive, no matter what comes their way. But they will change, and in these peerless times, I am breathlessly terrified that they will change for the worse.” She fixed her gaze on the ghostly image of the moon, the scar gouged on its surface by the vile Chariot’s devastating magic blast. “Beach City has been kind and nurturing. Stevonnie has precious little experience with liars and manipulators. They may be… unarmed.”

She closed two of her eyes. The third she left open.

“River of time,” she said, “I cast my eye into your current. Take me where I must.”

And for a while, she and Cat Steven napped next to each other.

* * *

I woke up in the mid-afternoon, a little after 3:30 going by the clock on the wall. I had that one very special kind of feeling, that feeling right after the sleep of the dead where you feel simultaneously refreshed and in total agony. With some effort I rolled onto my back, kicked my legs to get some more feeling into them, and checked my phone.

The group text was blowing up. My dads and mom had kept the train rolling for a while after I fell into the arms of sleep, finally conking out at around noon. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be seeing them until dinner. You know, whenever dinner was.

I cricked my neck, did some warm-up stretches, and changed into something that felt more going-out-y. So attired, I peeked into the hall.

Nobody to the left. Nobody to the right. Windows looking in on a courtyard, the mid-afternoon sun casting a warm glow on statues of three women standing back-to-back and witches milling around the ground.

Witches. Wow!

Connie’s memories of the Enchanted Parade were bright in my head. There wasn’t a big magic fight going on or anything, but those were some real live witches doing their post-class thing. I had to go mingle.

I stepped out into the hall at last, ready to go looking for the nearest exit, and in the time between losing myself in a daydream and stepping out the door three students had come skidding to a halt at my right.

“Stevonnie Universe-Maheswaran!” the leader said. I presume she was the leader because she was standing out front, holding a microphone, and had a certain gleam in her eyes. She had a brushy orange-brown afro--a little more red than yellow, and a little more orange than brown--a press visor and shiny red eyeshadow, terminating in red streaks from the edge of her eye to her ears. Speaking of ears, her smile was ear-to-ear, a prominent set of fangs giving the line of it a distinctive shape. And as I looked her over, maybe for landmines or whatever, I noticed she was bare-footed besides a little jewelry, golden hoops hanging around her ankles.

These I contemplated for a half-second before reality caught up with me.

“Pardon?” I said.

She’d held her pose the entire few seconds I took in the details of her being. “Wangari Wanjiru, of the Luna Nova News Network.” She held out her microphone--I now realized it ended in a stylized skull. “You’re the newest addition to the student body in Luna Nova, right?”

“I--suppose!” I said. “Unless someone else signed up right after I did.”

A mousy brunette--well, they were both mousy brunettes--the brunette with shorter hair and a meaner expression and a notepad jotted my words down. The longer-haired brunette took a bunch of pictures with a magic camera, or at least the eye made it look magic-y.

“And what a body you’ve added,” Wangari said, standing on tiptoe to try and look me dead on. No dice. “195.6 centimeters tall, and that’s in stocking feet, loyal viewers. The hair adds a little more, too--very impressive! What’s your ancestry?”

I faked a laugh and scratched my head, backing away from them. “Well, it’s a little weird…”

“Weird is good!” Wangari said. “Lemme warm you up with some tidbits from my trading card…” She seized a little trading card from her uniform’s vest pocket and read off the list on the back. “I’m 100% Kikyu, going back four generations. Named for a famous womens’-rights and eco-activist. Dad was a witch, mom sold the absolute hell out of some flowers. Also: I am just plain am not a big fan of shoes--and I see you  _ too _ are a person of taste!”

She clicked her ankle-hoops together.

“Well--that’s cool!” I said. “I just haven’t really found shoes that fit me yet. Maybe I’d like ‘em if I found more. They let you not wear shoes, really?”

“When there’s not anything official going on, no,” Wangari said. “What are you here for this time of year, anyway? Wanting to sneak in on the talent competition before your competitors can suss out your big gimmick?”

“My what…?”

“Ah, later!” Wangari said, with a dismissive gesture of her trading card. “Come on, walk with me, talk with me. Like your favorite political drama!” She kissed the trading card, then slipped it into my pocket and, while I was trying to say something about that, took my hand. With more of a yank than a tug she guided me down the hall.

I’m gonna be honest, between Wangari and Sardonyx it’s pretty clear I don’t interview well.

...I’m pretty sure I’m on the supply side for bad interviewing.

“So, I have to ask,” Wangari said. “The navel jewel--very impressive, and just a little bit naughty! That’s, what, [a pink diamond](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMp-lW6mfdI)?”

The world slammed to a halt.

“What? No, it’s a rose quartz,” I sputtered.

“No, it literally can’t be,” Wangari said, suddenly swinging in front of me, half-kneeling. “Look at the cut.” She ran her finger along one of the facets, sending a deep, wiggly shudder through my entire body. “Beautiful. If I pressed any deeper I’d be bleeding. The clarity--if I had a light or something that I could shine--oh wait.” She retrieved her wand, flicked it out, and conjured a bright light between the tines at the business end. She held it up against my belly, soft and cold. Where it passed through my gem the light turned pink but did not dim. “Yep. Clear as glass. That’s good. That’s real good.” She collapsed her wand and returned it to her yellow sash. “Now, as for the carat…” She touched the sides of my gem and tried to lift. I gasped and stepped away. “Okay, sorry, shoulda been more gentle… what the hell kind of spirit gum do you use? That sucker is in there nice and tight, couldn’t even find a seam.”

“Please, it’s--”

“Anyway:” She stood back up and then stepped closer to me, shockingly so. She held her microphone almost to my lips. She stepped forward, I stepped back, and her camera crew followed. “As I was saying, from just what I could feel the carat of that thing’s through the Goddamn roof! You’re friggin’ rich, babe! Don’t tell me you didn’t notice that before. Your dad’s so rich he has a doctor-wife and a gun-husband to protect the doctor-wife.”

“How do you know all this?!” I blurted.

“The internet has conditioned us into making our own orgies of evidence,” she said solemnly. “Makes my job real easy. Sorry that the world is so backwards that your doctor-mom and gun-dad can’t mention their wedding to money-dad on their Facebook pages. Anyway, that’s a pink diamond the size of the Cullinian I in your belly button, and your dad paid cash money to get you in here, so…”

I was against the wall now, warm glass at my back. I felt my knees turn to jelly. I slipped into a crouch, and Wangari was now looking me eye-to-eye. I could smell her perfume, or maybe her shampoo. Sandalwood.

“...you’re the tallest, richest witch in school. You’ve basically just made Sarah Bernhardt and Diana Cavendish obsolete in their own categories. You’re white-hot! You’re super-aptly named, Universe-Master-of-the-Universe! If it weren’t for the whole world-saving thing Diana and Atsuko Kagari and friends just did, you’d be the only witch this school would be talking about, and frankly--” She blinked. Her ear-to-ear smile fell to a more pursed, thoughtful expression. “Wait a sec. You’re crying?”

I blinked and the world turned clear. Why, yes, I was crying.

Wangari took a few (somewhat awkward, shuffling) steps back. “Sorry for pushing you so far. Sore subject, shoulda noticed earlier.”

The brunette without glasses rolled her eyes.

I climbed back up to my feet. “It’s… it’s alright. You didn’t know. You just, you know… you came on real strong, and…”

“Hey, you don’t have to talk about it. I won’t bring it up again, a’ight? You go ahead, take a walk, or don’t. We’ll catch up with you.”

“Nice going, boss,” the brunette without glasses said.

“Everybody’s got their limits, Kim-Kims,” Wangari said, twirling her microphone for some reason. “And clearly, I didn’t do enough research. Or maybe they don’t talk about weird personal stuff on their public social media, like… like, uh…”

She kept talking, but I made my escape, walking the opposite direction. Another witch turned the corner ahead of me, someone with bright red hair. She glanced at me speed-walking by; I rubbed my tears on my forearm as I turned the corner. I slumped against the wall.

Pink diamond.

[ Pink Diamond. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-x7HPABiHY)

I looked at my hand. I wasn’t shaking apart, wasn’t breaking. I had a faint realization why I was still intact: all of me was freaking out in the same direction. The words “cut with the grain” came to mind. This wasn’t Garnet after Sardonyx; this was Garnet after the first Gem horror. Garnet could do it; you can do it.

The dream on the alien moon.

“My Diamond!  _ Pink Diamond! _ ”

“Someone like… one of  _ you! _ ”

“Steven, she just wanted you to be _ you _ .”

“Then why don’t you  _ act  _ like it,  _ Pink?! _ ”

“--a WHEELCHAIR!”

Wait.

* * *

Wangari circled the X. “And that’s the game plan. Got it?” She held Kimberly’s endless notepad toward her sidekicks.

“You want us to walk up to her and ask her to try the interview again,” Kimberly said.

“‘They,’” Joanna said.

“Whatever,” Kimberly said.

“Yeah, but, you know, with style,” Wangari said. “And we got style to burn. Hey, wait, is that Sarah?”

It was indeed Sarah. She was pressed flat against the wall right by the corner, and she had a pair of long scissors in her hand. She was whispering, judging by how her mouth was moving but they couldn’t hear her in spite of only being about ten meters away.

“That looks like a problem,” Kimberly said.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Wangari said, handing her the notepad. “But let’s do get a word from the man on the street.” She powered on her microphone. “To action!” She power-walked towards Sarah, who was in turn stepping away from the wall, scissors clenched in hand.

“Let’s see how tall you are in a WHEELCHAIR!” Sarah screamed, and ran around the corner, ready to stab.

“Oh, shit!” Wangari said, seizing her wand. “Come on, we gotta--”

There was a meaty  _ crack, _ and a satisfying  _ crunch,  _ and a moment later, a harsh, breathy shriek of shock.

“No, no…” Wangari said, throwing aside her mike and sprinting down the hall. She slid across the tile as she reared back for a cast: “Duine Connigh--”

She redirected the magic bolt into the wall, where it burst into harmless sparks. Stevonnie was stepping away from the wall, hands over their mouth, and Sarah crumpled on the floor like laundry. There was a sizable chunk of wall dented and quite a large amount of blood. Was she breathing…?

“Oh, jeez,” Joanna whimpered.

“God_damn_,” Wangari said. “Okay, healing spells, everyone.”

“She tried to kill me,” Stevonnie said. “Why did…”

“Why does anyone do anything?” Wangari said. “I’ve been brushing up on first aid, I have this. Alright, first spell…”

Stevonnie stepped over to Sarah. They knelt, taking Sarah’s head into their lap. Her eyes were open but unfocused. She was breathing, but raggedly. Blood poured from her dented scalp as steadily as syrup. She was, indeed, a goddamn mess. Maybe she should call for Nurse Horowitz--no, bad idea. Call Diana, get her to work some Cavendish magi--

Stevonnie licked their lips and kissed Sarah’s injury.

A sparkling red glow washed over Sarah’s head, and the blood flow tapered to a halt. Her breathing steadied. At last, her eyes opened, unfocused, then fixating on Stevonnie looking over her.

“Hey,” Stevonnie said. “I’m sorry I hurt you like that. But I’m not gon--”

Sarah grabbed her scissors and shrieked and tried to stab them. But Wangari was on the draw this time, and the Hold Person spell locked her in place like something out of a street performance gimmick, the scissors in mid-arc over her head on trajectory to Stevonnie’s chest and looking Stev right in the eye.

“...holy shit,” they said.

“Don’t mind her!” Wangari said, pulling Sarah away. “She’s just defensive about her height. It’s kind of her thing.”

“Did she say ‘wheelchair?’”

“Oh, was that her thing?” Wangari said. “Gonna put you in a wheelchair so you wouldn’t be taller than her? Hah, yeah, that sounds on brand.” She laughed. “Man, you should see her Twitter.”

“I’m gonna go back to bed,” Stevonnie said, struggling to stand up. “I’m… I’m very tired.”

“Yeah…” Wangari said. “You’ve had a lot to take in. Welcome to the world of magic, eh?”

They smiled at her. “It’s like I never left home.”

“Hey--” Wangari said as they passed her. “I know some cool people around here. Or, well, I’ve interviewed them. I could set you up, get some face-time, or at least some people who aren’t gonna try and stab you. You know, if it sounds cool.”

“It does,” Stevonnie said.

“Sorry again for coming on so hard.”

“It’s alright. You didn’t know.”

Stevonnie walked determinedly back to their room.

Joanna finally shut her mouth.

“The hell was that?” Kimberly said.

“I think our new student is even more interesting than we could’ve possibly imagined,” Wangari said. “So let’s walk a little carefully from now on, alright, guys?”

“Sure,” Kimberly said.

They all looked at Sarah.

“So, uh,” Kimberly said. “When’s the spell gonna wear off?”

“I sorta used the police-strength version,” Wangari said. “So… maybe we should try and close her eyes or something.”

“I ain’t touchin’ ‘er.”

“Me neither.”

In the end, Joanna threw a blanket over her and nudged her next to a locker.

* * *

I closed the door, found it didn’t have a lock, and propped a chair under the handle. I curled up on my bed and stared at the closet for a while, [at mom’s sword](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doC63IdYlA0).

I felt in my pocket and found the trading card. The front image was a glamor shot of Wangari in a red one-piece bikini, a yellow ribbon tied high around her waist. She was posed with a surfboard on a Hawaiian beach. Or at least she was photoshopped on a Hawaiian beach. The caption read WAN IN THE “SAN”! There were like a dozen ways to have phrased that better, but…

There was a faint impression of lip gloss, not quite a lipstick mark.

“Flexibility, love and trust…” I half-said, half-sang.

I closed my eyes.

“Because you’re going to be something extraordinary. You’re going to be a  _ human being. _ ”

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here…

* * *

[ One day later. ](https://youtu.be/Z3L5gW5xOXI?t=60)

* * *

Garnet closed her third eye and opened her first and second.

She was in the den, lying down on the couch. Pumpkin was playing with Cat Steven. She had vaguely remembered moving, but it was all a blur, a wriggling nest of fourth-dimensional worms. No insight. No guidance.

On her own, still.

Very well.

She sat up, pivoted into a seated position. “Uncertainty,” she said. “What a wonderful feeling. I have not missed it.”

The entrance to the temple dilated, and Pearl stepped through. “Good morning, Garnet!” she said, stepping lightly. “Stevonnie just sent me a text! Several texts, actually. Would you like to read them? You’ve, ah, been a little off-beat the last day or so, so if you’d rather I read it to you, I’d be amenable to that.”

“Off-beat,” Garnet said.

“Well, when that… that thing with all the legs… crawled out of the sea and onto the boardwalk, you threw a car at it, and then we had to discuss insurance with that, er, understandably angry man…”

“I understand,” Garnet said. “I can read it. I’m in a better place, mentally. And temporally.”

“Of course!” Pearl said, handing her the phone. Garnet began to read Stevonnie’s message.

* * *

Hey guys.

I wish I could say it was a safe trip, but it wasn’t. I wish I could say it was fun, and it had its moments, but no. I was scared almost the entire time. Scared of what I was seeing, feeling, learning. And I wish I could say that I hadn’t been that scared in a long time, but that’s not true, either.

But we made it. We are at Luna Nova and we’re all alive and intact.

I told someone that the world of magic was just like home, and I guess it is. It’s only been… two days, maybe. But I’ve learned so much, seen so much, already. It’s a new world, one that’s been here on this planet all my life, that I had no idea existed until I was in it. The rules all feel different. I’m no world-saving hero, I’m just another kid in over their head.

Today I’m going to be sworn in. Last night after dinner a goblin got all my measurements, and today I’m going to be getting my own hat, my own uniform, my own wand. And shoes. Which I have to wear for formal events. So, you know, there’s that.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. I don’t even know where to begin to ask--about Yggdrasil, about Akko and how she brought it back, or even if I can ask any of those things without looking suspicious. I’m just going to have to wing it. But I’ve done pretty alright at that so far.

(...)

* * *

I stared at the phone, my thumbs hovering above the keyboard, and the next sentence did not want to come out. I wanted to ask the only question I had. It took an effort to even put my mind on the subject of Yggdrasil, even though I had been haunted and attacked and bled all over by things unleashed by its awakening.

I took a deep breath, and typed out the only thing I could.

* * *

I love you. Please be safe.

\--Stevonnie

* * *

Garnet set the phone down on the coffee table. She propped her elbows on her knees and rest her chin on her clasped hands.

“Garnet…?” Pearl said.

“Pearl,” she said. “We need to prepare for the worst.”

* * *

After everything that had gone down in the past few days, the past couple of weeks, well, the actual act of joining Luna Nova was the easiest thing in the world.

I changed into the formal uniform, tugged on a pair of boots that, blessedly, fit decently and had alright padding. I felt a nervous flutter of anxiety as I stretched and flexed in the formal uniform, trying to feel for weak points or places that needed to be sewn better. I started to talk myself down from it before realizing it was entirely because my gem was covered. I tried to cut the gem free with my fingernail before seeing a utility knife in the closet and making use of that instead.

I stepped out of the closet… changing room… closet... into Headmistress Holbrooke’s office (that the closet was in), a warm, open room decorated with ancient magical artifacts and one slightly-worrying “In Case Of Apocalypse” lever.

At least it was in the “off” position… I think.

Hm. Holbrook was a tiny old woman, warm-faced and smiling easily. She was to my left, standing just in front of her desk and holding a small black box. To my right was Diana Cavendish, holding two lengths of bright pink cloth. Between them was Prof. Chariot du Nord.

She didn’t have a youthful energy to her anymore, and she peered through a pair of modest glasses that dimmed the fire in her eyes. But from the casual grace of her stance to the gentle bulge of her biceps against her sleeves…

...I tried not to look too much. I could feel that tingle of disharmony, though not as intense as before. Thankfully. Oh, she was holding a big pointy witch hat. Important detail.

Diana Cavendish stepped forward. “From one student to the other, welcome to Luna Nova,” she said, holding out the hatband and belt. I tied the belt on right away; there was a waiting clasp at my left hip.

Chariot du Nord stepped forward. “Stevonnie Universe-Maheswaran,” she said. “From faculty to student, I wish you a fruitful and challenging three years at Luna Nova.” She held out my hat. I tied on the pink hatband and planted it on my head. My own witch hat.

Last, the headmistress shuffled forward. “For the sake of Gorgo-Mormo,” she said, “the Thousand-Faced Moon, the Moon-Hound, the Mother of Our Mothers, bear this power within you for the betterment of the world.” She lifted the lid of the box.

Within was my wand, collapsed, its three-tined point facing to my left.

I took the wand; its grip was icy-cold in my palm. I turned it around, examining it, and it grew warm as my own skin in seconds. With a little wordless guidance from Diana, I twisted the butt of the wand and popped out a… what, spell-magazine? A charge indicator? Magic battery? Whatever it was, a stack of indicator bars pulsed with a steady green light. I snapped the mag-battery back in place.

I flicked the wand, and it telescoped out. The tines sparked with green electricity.

Holbrooke clapped. “Oh, impressive! Your powers must be abundant already. You’ll do fine here, I can tell.”

Chariot smiled warmly. “Welcome to Luna Nova, Stevonnie.”

I collapsed the wand and slotted it into the hoops at my waist. The weight was light, but reassuring. A wand. A witch hat. A … witch belt, I guess. And nobody was giving me guff about opening up my uniform’s navel.

(Maybe the money was at work here, but… ah, whatever. Thanks, dad.)

“Now, then,” Diana said, “let’s go celebrate.”

She led the charge out of the office into the waiting room outside. Akko had strung up letters saying WELL COME STEVO!, and also stapled a sign explaining it was an “RE2 Thing” on the wall underneath it. Money-Dad was there in his POSION [sic] shirt, Guard-Dad in a formal suit, Doctor-Mom in an elegant, colorful sari. And off to the side were Akko, Sucy, and Lotte, Akko and Lotte joining the ‘rents in applauding, Sucy sarcastically blowing on a noisemaker.

I bowed. “Thank you, thank you so much,” I said, putting on some kind of voice that I only later realized was Sardonyx’s. “It’s a great pleasure putting this hat on!”

“Oh, oh!” Lotte said, nudging ahead of the crowd. “I, um! I have a request! Namely, I have a song I’d like to sing for the situation!”

“Please say yes,” Akko said. “She is awesome at singing. And her girlfriend bought her a karaoke machine!” She pointed at a portable karaoke machine right behind Lotte. “So, you know… it’d be cool…”

“You don’t even have to ask,” I said. “We sing all the time back in Beach City. You don’t here?”

“Thankfully no,” Sucy said.

“Huh! Better change that up now that I’m here,” I said, grinning.

“Please, don’t,” Sucy said.

Lotte unspooled a microphone from the karaoke machine and cued up a particular song. “Alright, everybody, take your seats, or stand, or gently dance, or something! Because--” She found a niche in the waiting room to set the machine, and stood precariously on a chair for more projection. “Now we celebrate the arrival of a new student with the music of my favorite band! Some may even say… the best band.”

She hit start, and spacey guitar notes wafted from the karaoke machine. Lotte took a deep breath and [sang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKftiJS30Cs):

Sister Bluebird, go sailing on by

Catch my soul, catch the very light

Hide the mysteries

Of life on your wing

Though you’ve seen them,

Please don’t say a word;

What you don’t know,

I have never heard~

The karaoke machine wasn’t a perfect speaker, the room had terrible acoustics, and we were packed shoulder to shoulder. But man, could Lotte sing.

For the first time since I arrived, for this beautiful moment in time, everything seemed like I could handle it.


	6. MGC 5501: Advanced Monster Hunting (Classroom)

_ 6-1: Textbook _

At my tenth minute of being an officially sworn-in witch, I had my very first class. I was pretty dang excited.

I was front-row center in a class that looked like a  _ college  _ class, all stadium-style seating, old wooden desks that were smooth from centuries of butts in seats and elbows on rests. The part of me which was Connie was exhilarated to get a taste of the college life. The part of me which was Steven was imagining a dozen scenes from a dozen entries in the  _ Wildly Disproportionate and Highly Illegal Escalation of the Dedicated Academics Against their Foes the Athletic Scholarship Pursuants _ series. _ _

“Stevonnie Universe-Maheswaran!” Ms. Finneran said from the podium in front of an enormous chalkboard.

“Yes, m’am!” I said, smiling ear to ear.

“What is your experience in the working of magic so far?” she said. “Can you demonstrate the spells to which you are acquainted or accustomed?”

“I can,” I said, leaping onto my desk. I pulled my shield from my gem and held it high above my head. I flung it at a patch of bare wall on the far side of the room, leaped up, reducing my mass ‘til I was nice and buoyant in the air, and caught my shield as it ricocheted back at me at shoulder level. I sat cross-legged midair, dismissed my shield, and floated back into my seat. “That’s just a small sample of my skills,” I said, beaming. “I can heal injuries with my spit, I can make plant monsters… with my spit… but that’s a long story… et cetera!”

Yeah, not a good time to bring up Lars.

Finneran nodded, pleased. “All without use of a wand,” Finneran said. “You have a grasp of several fairly difficult spells at the intuitive level. You may note that Ms. Cavendish has yet to achieve such feats, and Ms. Kagari is only capable of the  _ Metamorphie  _ spell line at the intuitive level. Thus, I believe we can bypass the entry-level math. Let’s see how well you handle the equations for a spell of moderate skill.”

She brandished her wand at the blackboard and twisted it like a key. An equation began to write itself across the blackboard.

Steven isn’t a fan of math, per se, but he isn’t opposed to it. Connie has a head for it, it’s one of her best classes in school.

I watched that equation fill up the entire blackboard, corner to corner, top to bottom, and felt my happiness drain out of me like I had a leak. So this is what math feels like to people who hate math.

Finneran saw my expression. She hitched on some inner thought for a minute. “Well…” she said, “maybe a little practical introduction to basic magic would be good. Warm you up. That levitation ability you have, how well can you maneuver? How much ground can you cover?”

“Uhmmm – I can’t maneuver that well. It’s pretty floaty. Had a rough time getting back to the ground the first time.”

“Alright. How about this:  _ Strahl. _ ” She retrieved her wand. “The power of this spell is adjudicated by how loudly you cast it. Simply aim and speak softly, sotto voce, as if you were carrying on a conversation in the library.” She said at that exact volume: “ _ Strahl. _ ” Her elbow kicked back and a thin jet of purple energy burst from the wand, about two feet long. She ended the spell. “Try that in mid-air.”

“Yess’m!” I jumped into the air again, twirled my wand from my belt into the air and snatching it with my left hand. I held it out and, casual as can be, muttered: “ _ Strahl. _ ”

I felt a tickle in my funny bone, and a blast of purple light punched the far wall and sent me flying towards the window. I yelped, aimed the wand up, and smashed into the seats. I, well, I didn’t know how to turn a spell off at this point, and I was in a lot of pain from hitting all those seats, and... 

Okay, it was a pretty bad scene all around.

* * *

The February air was bitterly cold when the wind blew, even in the direct sunlight by the gate leading to the Tor. Diana couldn’t help but feel a little bit impatient, even given the circumstance. Still...

Chariot twisted her hat slightly counter-clockwise. “Is it straight yet?” she said. “I feel that it isn’t.”

“It’s cool, teach!” Akko said. “You wear this hat every day of your life and you never think twice about it!”

“But I’m going to a trial,” Chariot said. “People are going to expect me to look professional. I can’t just…”

Akko plucked the hat from her head, blew into it, and popped it back on. A little jumping was necessary. “There. You look a-may-zah!” She gave Chariot a thumbs up. “Nobody will question your skills. And if they do, say that your favorite student put your hat on your head for good luck, and everybody will be like, aww, the kids love her.”

Chariot sputtered. “Really…” She glanced downward, not (so far as Diana could tell) to look herself over or spy something on the grass, but to conceal a warm blush. “Thank you, Akko. I’ll be sure to tell them exactly that.”

“Yo, we gettin’ this show on the road or what?” Prof. Nelson said, snuffing out a cigarette on her thick leather riding glove. Due to some late unpleasantness, Chariot had lost the ability to fly. It was in fact directly Croix Merides’s fault, which would make standing in her defense before the Council somewhat difficult. Everything in Chariot’s life was somewhat difficult, of course. Some idle sting of modern wisdom pricked at the back of Diana’s thoughts, but she couldn’t quite remember how it went. “C’mon, I’m freezin’ my tits off out here!”

“I’m coming,” Chariot said. “Keep safe, both of you. I won’t be long. I hope.”

She sat side-saddle on Nelson’s broom, her long, bell-shaped skirt making flying passenger somewhat tricky. The two lifted off the ground and with a mighty whoop Nelson flew through the gate, vanishing into the filmy mire in the distance.

“There she goes,” Akko said, the sentence suddenly gaining a tune at “she.” “There she goes again! Racin’ through my brain–”

She waited for Diana to finish the sentence.

“I don’t know that one,” Diana said, trying not to let the guilt show.

“Aw. I need to play it for you, it’s one of the all-time greats. It was like in a million movies.  _ The Parent Trap _ , yeah?”

“Afraid I haven’t seen a lot of movies at all,” Diana said, looking back to Luna Nova. “By and large it was just what my aunt and cousins wanted to watch, and most of it was ‘when you’re older,’ and…”

Akko clapped an arm around Diana’s shoulder, to her surprise. “Hey, we got time. We could watch something. Like  _ The Parent Trap _ ! Or that movie where the guy marries an axe murderer, wossitcalled…”

Diana wondered if now was the time to reveal her tastes. On one hand, it would be foolish to think that she’d drive Akko away after, well, everything that had happened over the past week just by revealing that she liked her movies less crowd-pleasing and more introspective. On the other, she had spent much of her life living in terror about ruining everything for one little bad call.

_ Didn’t your mother get so much worse  _ after  _ the Shiny Chariot show? No, she wasn’t in the audience, but magic can be so tricky like that, going up the well, biting the– _

“Diana?” Akko said.

Diana shook her head. “Sorry. Just… distracted.”

“It’s the weather,” Akko said. “It’s too dang cold out. Let’s get some hot chocolate or tea or coffee or something. That’s in order of preference, by the way! Definitely want some liquid chocolate in me if I can.”

“That sounds excellent,” Diana said, and with a little hesitation put her own arm around Akko’s waist. “Maybe a movie, too. I know you’d like to share one of yours, but… have you ever heard of  _ Donnie Darko? _ ”

Akko nodded vigorously, to Diana’s relief.

“Days like this always put me in mind of that movie,” she said. “It was set in October, but fall and spring are twins in some ways.” To her relief they began to walk toward the dormitory. There was a goblin who sold drinks just inside the building, he would have hot chocolate, and maybe some soft-serve ice cream.

(She’d seen Akko buy hot chocolate, pay for ice cream, then dispense ice cream into her cup. If Akko weren’t constantly bursting with energy, Diana supposed, she would rapidly develop a weight problem.)

“Huh, yeah!” Akko said. “Now that you mention it, it’s cold and bright in both fall  _ and _ spring. Or, like, pre-spring.”

“‘Late winter,’ some sages call it,” Diana said. She looked at Akko; and Akko looked back.

Do you remember it like I remember it, Akko? The Earth below us, the stars brilliant as polished diamonds, the apocalypse cut off at the heels, the world turned right and our victory sure. I was terrified. I knew, at any moment, that we would be dead, that the magic of the Shiny Rod, returned to the stars, would fall away from us, and we would choke in the vacuum of space, just as all your friends had given their lives to boost us after the nuclear missile, and it would be right, we would be punished for our hubris as the gods demand.

You saw me crying, Akko, and you kissed me.

Kissed me.

I’d seen you lose all hope, I’d given you the means to find it again, and hand in hand we ascended and set things right. And…

“Akko,” Diana said.

“Yeah, Diana?” Akko said.

“[Do you love me?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EE3c_ksP04)”

They stopped just outside of the student union. There was a patch of snow hidden in its shadow, the last survivor of a brief snowstorm howled up by a church grim five very long nights ago. The patch had turned gray and spotty from gleeful feet tromping on it. Most, Diana saw, were the right size for Akko’s feet.

“Is this a test?” Akko said, cautiously.

“Maybe for me,” Diana said. “I, just... “ They had been walking side by side; now Diana stood in front of Akko, keeping her arm around her. “It feels like I could wake up at any minute, and I’ll be…”

“Dying?” Akko said.

Diana nodded.

“You said you thought you were dreaming,” Akko said. “And that you were scared of waking up. Remember what I said?”

She took Diana’s free hand in hers.

“‘If we’re dreaming, we’re sharing the same dream,’” Akko said, quoting herself. “‘So when you wake up, just tell me, and it’ll all be true anyway.’” She nuzzled her head against Diana’s. “Plus… I don’t think any of us would’ve wanted to dream all those dead monsters this last week.”

Diana chuckled, and Akko kissed her.

Diana froze in place.

Their second kiss.

Akko left a third kiss on her chin. “Still feels good to me,” Akko said. “Don’t think the fire’s gone out of our relationship yet.”

“...let’s hold off on the movie today,” Diana said. “Let’s just…”

“...enjoy our company,” Akko said.

“Yes. Let’s try that.”

* * *

“Let’s try  _ this, _ ” Finneran said.

I sat cross-legged opposite Finneran on her desk, on account of the only usable desks were now in the back rows. I wondered if it was possible to leave a tip for the fairy janitors, and tip really generously.

“Okay,” I said. “What next?”

“Intuition-based magick may be more of your… speed? That tracks, right? That sounds natural?”

“I have no idea.”

“I am afraid I don’t have a lot of experience with it…” With a noise of exertion she leaned over and fished around in the drawers of her desk. “...so it’s going to be new for both of us. So… mmph…” She pulled out a small hardcover book, the slipcase covered in stock photo art. It was titled  _ How to Witch: The Witchy-Witch Way! _ and judging by a mark on the spine it had been self-published. “Alright…” She flipped to a bookmarked page. “Close your eyes and concentrate. Take your wand in your hand…”

She waited a moment.

“Yes?” I said. I telescoped my wand and rubbed some carbon scoring off the tines.

“Force of habit. Usually Ms. Jansson interjects at that point. Alright, now, let’s get to it.” She took a deep breath. “Close your eyes…”

I did.

“Breathe deeply. We are going to cast a basic light spell,  _ Soillseachadh _ . We will find the inner light and bring it out.”

Patterns of squares and circles moved in the dark behind my eyelids. Steven only saw darkness when he closed his eyes; Connie saw patterns. It was Steven’s least-favorite thing about being Stevonnie. Still: focus.

“The moon has a thousand faces. The moon is always waxing, always waning; in only one breath is it ever full, and in only one breath is it ever empty. She is waxing as Mater Tenebrarum, our Lady of Darkness, mother to rats; she is waning as Mater Suspiria, the Mother of Silence, whose eyes are known by owls; and in the dark, behind cover of cloud, below the horizon when there are no stars, she is Mater Lachrymarum, our Mother of Tears, whose fall is arrested by the webs of the spiders which are her children.

“A life, too, has a thousand faces. Our life is lived in one breath, and we are gone, hardly to have been at all. But in that breath, we wear a thousand faces. We are the daughters of Gorgo-Mormo, and in our breath, we speak Her name.

“Your body is not yours alone; it is borrowed carbon.

“Your will is not yours alone; it is blurred by thumbprints.

“Your wand is not yours alone; it is burning starstuff….”

_ Your gem is not yours alone. It is a diamond allotrope born from a planet whose ten billion inhabitants died in agony… _

_ Your soul is not yours alone. It is a process, and you want the process to stop... _

_ Your wand is not yours. It was not made for you. But like the Earth, like the Crystal Gems, like your final husband, you will take it for the sake of your vanity, Pink Diamond– _

My wand clattered to the desk. I was sweating, hyperventilating.

Finneran closed the book. “...later,” she said. “We’ll see this out later.” She slid off the desk with a little effort. “I have some water, if you’d like some.”

“I’m fine,” I lied, stuffing my wand back into my belt loop. “I just need some air.”

“Don’t be discouraged,” Finneran said. “There… there have been some successes, even with initial difficulties. This is the first few hours of your education. You have everything ahead of you.” She erased the blackboard with an utterance.

“Is it weird?” I said. “To have, like, the stuff I can do, but not able to even cast one basic thing out of a wand?”

“I haven’t heard of it before,” Finneran said. “But every day is a journey of discovery. I’ll discuss it with the other teachers. You’ll be fine. Go get your air.” She sighed. Was she sad, was she wistful, was she remembering…?

“Thank you,” I said. “Do you want me to help–”

“–clean up? I can handle it. Go rest your head.”

* * *

“...thank you, m’am,” Stevonnie said, with a short bow. She – pardon, they – shuffled out of the classroom, pausing only to leave a hastily-scribbled IOU on a sheet of paper blown free during their little spell misadventure.

Finneran waited for them to close the door, counted to three, then unlocked the bottommost drawer on her desk, the all-important emergency supply desk, with a refrigerated compartment for snacks and the all-important bottle of instant nerves. She poured a few fingers of Highland Black and bolted it down. She slapped the metal cup on her desk for no reason other than she felt like it, damn it.

“Is this what teaching Akko was like, Chariot?” she said into her empty cup. “I don’t know how you put up with her that long… but by the Mother I’m not going to let the next Kagari slip through my fingers.”

She glared at the book.

“You’re not helping, you know.”

The book glared back. Is it me who’s the problem, it said, or is it you, Anne?

“...phantom conversations with textbooks,” Finneran said. “And now I’m talking to myself. Only one cure for that.”

Three more fingers of Highland Black it was. As she poured, her phone rang. She cursed Croix for cursing her in turn with the infernal device, but she consulted it nonetheless.

“Hello?” she said.

* * *

While Stevonnie underwent testing, their parents decided to kill time in the student union. Blessedly, there was one other visitor returning to the same city that day, and she had a limo coming.

While five different video game consoles were hooked up to the student union TV, their hostess had, at the good doctor’s insistence, set it to the news while they took their tea. Lucky them, none of the handful of students present seemed to care they were there; most were gathered around the eternal chair fire off in the corner, talking or playing or texting at each other.

The tiny blonde woman cracked the cube of ice into the larger of the two metal shaker-cups. “I respect his hustle,” she said, “but frankly, I can’t say no to Pusser’s. Say what you will about the military – and I have – but the Navy made a fine rum.”

“Can confirm,” Dr. Maheswaran said, with a wistful sigh, gesturing with a shotglass. Annabel had been kind enough to pour her a shot before launching into making a cocktail with a kit she carried around in a suitcase.

“It’s a little early to drink that heavily, isn’t it?” Greg said.

Doug gently elbowed him in the side. “We’re on vacation. Kind of. Now we are, at least. Might as well enjoy ourselves.”

“And with that,” the woman said, she poured the cocktail into the ice glass, smacked the smaller cup into the larger, and began to shake the cups by her head, slowly at first and gradually accelerating, before theatrically slamming the cup into the table and slapping the smaller cup to break the seal chilled between the cups by the ice. She fit a strainer and poured herself and Priyanka each a glass of a tall, creamy blonde cocktail.

Annabel Creme, bestselling author of Night Fall, tapped a shaker of nutmeg over each glass. Priyanka wafted the smell over to herself. “God, can you make them, girl,” she said. “I should start reading your work. I know my daughter wasn’t a fan, but, then, I could never get into that one series she likes.”

“So it goes,” Annabel said.

“Have you read  _ Wolfman Bare Chest? _ ” Priyanka said, giving her suggestive eyebrows.

“Why,” Annabel said, “that series is just shy of mindless woman-on-wolfman pornography. How dare you accuse a maiden such as I of reading all 39 volumes.”

“How dare you accuse a doctor of knowing that’s porn,” Priyanka said, with a wry smile.

Annabel held out her glass. “To the great deal of pain we must kill.”

“Amen to that, sister,” Priyanka said, completing the toast.

Before they could take their first drink, the man on the news looked up. “This just in,” he said. “I’m receiving word that outgoing flights from London have been delayed until tomorrow.”

“Wait…” Priyanka said.

“Aw, dang,” Greg said, paying attention to the news now.

The camera panned to the left as an infograph appeared over the newscaster’s shoulder. “Conditions have grown rapidly unsuitable for travel. This report indicates it is due to an ‘unforeseen change in conditions.’ Heathrow apologizes for–” Another sheet of paper slid in from the side, and the anchor scanned it. “More news breaking. Gatwick and Luton have announced flight cancellations as well. Incoming flights are being rerouted to…”

With a soft burst of static, the infograph was replaced with footage of a descending airplane approaching a Towerham airport, only to be yanked violently into the clouds by almost-invisible tendrils of force.

“...surviving aircraft are being rerouted to the nearest airport, or into the ocean for retrieval in extreme cases where…”

The video changed to a video tagged LIVE FOOTAGE. Heathrow Airport was being engulfed in flame spewed from the dripping maw of what looked like an undead dragon, on account of being a heavily-decayed, winged reptile whose frontmost talon was crushing a landed passenger plane like a crunchy breadstick.

The newsanchor took a deep breath. “All commercial flights across the Atlantic are being grounded as, and I quote directly, ‘countless winged horrors descend from the heavens to drive man out of the sky.’ Oceanic travel has also been affected, though to a lesser degree, as–”

A ludodactylus smashed through the backdrop of the newsroom. It issued a hateful, hissing shriek and brandished an illegally-sized butterfly knife in one of its little wing-hands. Its beak full of barbed teeth would make that seem unnecessary, but few men can claim to understand the inner workings of the pterosaur mind.

“God, no!” the anchor said, kicking a double-barreled shotgun from under his desk and into his hands. “Not now – not like this!” He took aim as the ludodactylus charged him. The news abruptly cut out, replaced by the image of a little girl playing tic-tac-toe with a clown doll.

“...putain de merde,” Annabel said.

Priyanka downed her Painkiller in one long drink.

“Can you make me one of those?” Greg said. “I, uh… I think I could use one…”

“Make it two,” Doug said.

“Three,” said Priyanka, half gasping.

Annabel took a determined sip. “Round for the table. Got it.”

* * *

I wound up wandering in an anxious haze until I found one of the school’s courtyards. After making sure there weren’t other students around – they were making a beeline for the student union for some reason – I wound up taking a seat by a statue of Gorgo-Mormo. The statue was of three women holding hands and standing back to back, which I was told was the Triple Goddess’s whole deal, so, I dunno. Maybe it was a subconscious plea for luck. I sat on a bench in the shadow of the goddess and felt sorry for myself.

Horror I thought I could take; I hadn’t taken it well. Shock I thought I could take; nope, no luck there, either. I couldn’t take a little reasonable doubt, and I wasn’t taking failure too lightly either. For every step forward it felt like I got yanked back into the dark five steps.

It felt like failure, anyway. If I washed out here and now, what was I gonna do? The plan would be scuppered. What could we do after that? Just say, “hey, sorry I lied to your face about why I’m here, but your new livelihood is a huge pain in the ass for me and mine, so could you turn it back off?”

Knowing Greg paid a lot of money for me to be here didn’t help. If I thought too much about it I felt like the bad guy from an 80s movie.

I was lost in the depths of feeling sorry for myself when Finneran found me.

“Excuse me, Stevonnie?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am?” I said, looking up. (I was staring at the grass… or in the grass’s direction.)

“I have some news.”

I crossed my fingers. “What kind of news?”

“I am assembling a team to help in Glastonbury.”

“Help with what?”

“You handled your share of the monster fighting quite ably yesterday, so I heard. How would you like to do a little more?”

“...sure!” I said.

Monster hunting I can do.

* * *

_ 6-2. Safety Gear _

Today I learned that Luna Nova has an armory, or at least a broomstickery that had the air of an armory about it. Or maybe it was just me? It felt like a place where people go to get dangerous. The place felt like a barn, so it was a little more homey for me than the other witches seemed to think. Ironically the place was crazy-dusty, all except for the brooms in their racks.

In the middle of the room Prof. Finneran was burning coal in a brazier; a glowing map of Glastonbury hung in the smoke. It’s not like they didn’t have chalkboards or anything, but I guess this was just cooler, and I didn’t want to argue.

Akko was here, wearing a tie around her head like a headband for reasons I couldn’t guess; Diana, Lotte, and Sucy, who was leaning against a support beam; Prof. Finneran consulting a phone, tepidly and with obvious effort; and Amanda, the witch who was in the shower before me. She was talking to two other witches; a plump, happy-looking lady with pink hair in long pigtails, and Constanze, the gremlin-girl from earlier.

I don’t know if she was actually a gremlin or part-gremlin but she was pretty dang short. Is that a mean thing to assume? I mean, I know some short people...

“Alright,” Ms. Finneran said. “Here is the situation as it stands. Glastonbury has been in lockdown for three days. The police have been evacuating the populace to more defensible locations for the duration. Last night, their transmissions grew erratic. This morning, there was no sound-off from the police. The hospital has been playing an S-O-S all day… and it falls on us to answer it.

“The Wild Hunt and the military of the United Kingdom are presently quite occupied with securing London and other airports across the country. We are the only people who can answer the call. We need the staff of Luna Nova on-hand to defend the campus, but you lot, I hesitantly admit, are the most qualified for–”

“Hot damn!” Akko said. “Mon-ster hunt! Mon-ster hunt! C’mon, guys, say it with me now!” She pumped her arms and chanted. Amanda joined in before Diana gently quashed the cheer.

Finneran huffed and said, “...I would say that I would at least give you the chance to turn down my offer, but at least two of you are quite eager.”

“Make it three,” I said, swelling with pride. Monster hunting, oh yeah. I was good at that.

“What is our SOP for the mission, m’am?” Diana said.

“Go house-to-house,” Finneran said, “root out any remaining entities, secure the hospital, and locate any additional survivors. I’ll try and get more help your way as soon as I can.”

“I appreciate it,” Amanda said, “but you know we’re a bunch of total badasses, right? You might as well pour some more Jack and wait it out, Dick Whiskey, Drunk Cop.”

“Will you please maintain decorum for even half a minute, O’Neill?!” Finneran said.

“Like hell,” Amanda said, holding out her fist. The pink-haired girl completed the bump. “That’s the spirit, Jazzy.”

Finneran slapped her own forehead. “I should’ve known better than to treat this seriously. Alright. Will you at least listen to my suggested tactics?”

“I know I’m listening!” Akko said, putting a hand to her ear for emphasis.

“Diana, Akko,” Finneran said, pointing her wand at the map. “Take to the air–”

“Still can’t fly,” Akko said.

“...fine,” Finneran said, collapsing her wand. “Clearly I am unprepared for my own presentation. What do you suggest, then?”

Constanze stepped forward, producing a laser pointer. She pointed at Sucy and Lotte, then lit up the Tor. “Fly,” she said, with a little effort.

“And survey the town and keep you all informed?” Lotte said.

“Or be bait for flying monsters,” Sucy said. She licked her lips. “Maybe they’ll–”

Constanze mimed: zip it.

Sucy grumbled.

Cons shone her light at the Tor again, then pointed at Akko, and Diana.

“‘Cause of the scary stuff that’s been there the past few days!” Akko said. “And me and Diana are the strongest, so we can totally handle it if something popped out again.”

And last she laser-pointed Gog-Magog and indicated herself, the other witches wearing green, and me. She slipped her laser pointer into her pocket and mimicked my ready-to-rock stance, punctuating her non-speech with a sharp nod.

“And… what then?” I said.

“She’ll know,” Amanda said, stretching. “So that’s all we need.”

“Would you care for mana routers, at the very least?” Finneran said. “So that you don’t run out in the depths of monster territory.”

“Well, of course, teach,” Akko said. “That sounds excellent.”

“Even me?” I said, hesitantly.

“Of course,” Finneran said. “You’re far from defenseless, and…” Her eyes flicked to Akko briefly before returning to me. “There is precedent for situations of high duress… assisting… inexperienced witches… in discovering how best to perform their art.” I could hear the euphemism marks in her speech. She stepped around the brazier to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “I have faith in your abilities, Universe-Maheswaran.”

“Thank you,” I said, with a little nod.

“Now,” Finneran said, “if you please–”

“Let’s get this train a-rollin’!” Akko said. “Toot too-o-o-ot!”

Finneran groaned.

* * *

I headed to my room, grabbing my sword and cell phone. I wore my blade with pride and my wand with a little uncertainty. I mean, I got the wand to work once, kind of. That’s progress, right?

The Verdant Viceroys and I waited at the gate from Gog-Magog. It was just a pair of linked trees right now, no gate out of here. Also, I learned that the coven that wore green was officially titled the Verdant Viceroys. Fun little tidbit, there.

Constanze sat on a hi-tech kitted-out broom, playing a Saturn emulator on her little robot friend that she had that I also just now discovered existed. Amanda was listening to headphones loud enough I could hear [what she was listening to.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu-c1lS3Ri8) And Jasminka was eating one fried pink dough wad at a time from a giant bag of such.

She held out a pink wad of gently-fried dough to me. “Grumble Puff?” she said. “Happy flavor!”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the offer. It was chewy on the outside, like a stale donut, and squishy on the inside, like an undercooked donut, and it tasted like someone mixed in pink frosting into the batter before cooking. And it had sprinkles. I gave her a thumbs up, which she returned with a little happy sound.

We were waiting for The Sign. Akko’s crew went through the Tor portal first, then Sucy and Lotte. I’m not clear what we were waiting for, other than the sun to get precipitously low and the sky to go indigo as clouds rolled on in. Better not be raining, I thought. I idly checked my phone. I wondered if I should’ve left it behind – professional conduct and such – but I felt a little better being able to text the ‘rents if need be.

Finneran told me not to text them, but frankly, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done.

“Riding out to Glastonbury,” I typed. “Gotta fight some monsters, gotta save some civilians! See you later! Have fun with Annabel!”

I waited for a response and got none.

Then, nothing happened.

A little more nothing happened.

I put my phone in my pocket.

Still nothing.

I tapped my toe on the grass. “You have a lot of adventures here, Jasminka?”

She nodded. “I like to take it easy, enjoy the sights. But I helped save the world once, and I like to pitch in now and again. Do you have any pets?”

“I do,” I said. “I have a … a big cat. Named Lion. And a small one named Cat Steven.”

“Like the singer? Neat,” Jasminka said. “I have a few. Maybe I’ll show you sometime!”

“Like, here in Luna Nova?” I said. “That’s cool. Maybe I’ll get to bring in Lion when, you know, things calm down a bit.”

“That’d be nice…” Jasminka said, eating another Grumble Puff. “Do you have opossums where you’re from?”

“Some!” I said. Steven only got to see possums on the occasions the cute animal blogs he followed posted them; Connie mostly saw them on the sides of roads, either fake or real dead. Steven felt like crying at the thought of that, but I held off. I had to keep my morale up in front of the Viceroys.

“Are they cute there, too?” Jasminka faintly sparkled in the fading light.

“Obviously,” I said. Maybe we could save the possums back home somehow. Possum tunnels for street crossing, tiny fences, something. Contact a wildlife shelter on what to do. Or just cry on a bunch of ‘em. Wouldn’t be hard, the poor dears. And then: immortal possums.

Wait… would that be a gigantic problem?

“I love their little hands,” she said, gesturing with her pudgy hands. “And their pointy snoots. And their fuzzy bodies! And their wormy tails. I just love possums tip to tip, I do, I do.”

I smiled. “You’re pretty darn cute yourself.”

She blushed. “Awww… I should bake you a pie.”

“I will gladly take you up on that pie!” I said.

“Do you like fruit more, or chocolate?”

“I do love chocolate…”

“I’ll have to make you chocolate chess pie, then.” Jasminka pat me on the belly, just above my gem. I backed off a step reflexively. “Oh… I’m sorry. I got a little too fresh.” She glanced away.

“It’s – it’s alright!” I said. “Just ask before you do something more, uh, more touchy than a hug.”

“Okay,” Jasminka said. “I’ll give you a little space, though –”

The gate thrummed to life, a swirling green portal pouring in the space between the trees.

“Hot damn,” Amanda said, pulling her headphones off. “Hop on, new kid, we ride!”

I took a seat sidesaddle behind her, feeling some minor sorcery take hold to make riding a wooden stick something like comfortable. We lifted from a low hover to a good ten feet above the ground.

“Hold on,” Amanda said.

I debated where to put my hands before Amanda grabbed my right and put it on her hip. I could hear her smirk, it was that loud.

“ _ Tia Freyre _ . Boom!” she said.

I’ve flown in upwards of ten different spaceships, a biplane twice, once supersonic cross-continental, and I can reduce the effect of gravity when I jump, and jump as high as I please.

Let me tell you: no matter how you do it, no matter how long or how fast, so long as you’re in control? Flying is always amazing.

* * *

Over in the student union, the Universe-Maheswaran Pretend Family Unit’s phones all went off.

Nobody heard, though, or felt them go off, because they were a little busy.

The gathered students clapped and chanted: “How low! Can you go! How low! Can you go!”

Priyanka had a bottle of Plantation Overproof Rum in her hand, taking a long, highly inadvisable draft as she damn-near crab walked to the limbo bar two witches held for her. The clapping accelerated as she almost cleared the bar, then hiccupped too loud and bapped it with her ribs. She hit the ground, laugh-coughing as burning overproof rum splattered out of her mouth and nose.

“God, she’s beautiful,” a very drunk Greg said.

“You fuckin’ said it,” an even drunker Annabel said.

“Whuzzat… wh’zzat you said ‘bout my wife, fucker?” a barely-keeping-it-together Doug said.

“Yeah,” Greg said, putting a heavy arm on his brother-from-another-mother’s shoulder. “Thas’ our wife.”

“Yeah,” Doug said darkly.

* * *

Amanda juked hard as she plunged out of the portal, dragging her boot on the ground to help slow us down before we crashed into a row of hedges opposite the trees. Jasminka and Constanze followed a few moments later at a more modest pace.

I brushed hair out of my eyes. “Wow,” I said. “You’re good at this.”

“Better believe I am,” Amanda said, hopping into the air and staying there. “Lemme guess,” she said to Constanze, “we’re gonna check out the camping grounds, then follow the road to the north curve of Glastonbury?”

Cons grunted and gave a thumbs up. She mouthed something I couldn’t quite guess.

“What was that?” I said, as Cons took the lead, Jazzy just behind and Amanda and me taking drag at a low hover about five feet off the ground.

“‘Slow speed, deep owls,’” Amanda said. “Means take your time and keep both eyes open. Cons loves that tactics shiz. I mean, she  _ is _ Prussian. Heckler ‘n Koch, the MG-43… some other stuff… anyway.”

We hovered over a row of hedges and into a little neighborhood, floating up above the rooftops. The sunlight hadn’t vanished yet, but the cloud cover was building rapidly, less indigo and more ebony. Constanze’s robot buddy shone a spotlight on the streets below. There were no lights, no sign of life, no movement. Not even any cats or whatever the UK has instead of possums. Crown possums? No crown possums.

“So,” I said. “Do we have spells to detect monsters?”

“Probably,” Amanda said, shrugging. “I bet Cons has something for it.”

After some searching, we didn’t find anyone or anything. There weren’t even many signs of a panic, beyond one car that had been abandoned in the street. No blood, or at least none I could see from this high up. The wind picked up in irregular gusts. The sound was a little too animalistic for my liking.

Oh, and it did check me and Amanda in our flight path a bit. Not so much Jasminka, but Constanze had to power her broom’s rotor against the wind to keep control.

“Jeez,” Amanda said. “You’re lighter than you look.”

“I am?” I said. “Hang on, lemme try…”

I realized I was floating, just a little. Nerves, maybe. I tried cutting out the power until we took a sudden dip.

“Yarp!” Amanda said. “Theeeere it is!”

“Oh, dang, hang on!” I fiddled with my sense of ballast ‘til we were as steady as Jazzy in the blustery evening. “There we go.”

“You got that weight-change thing going on like Jazzy?” Amanda said. “Neat.”

“It’s not bad at all,” I said.

“What other tricks you got? Akko told me about the stuff you broke out against that nutsack whale.” We left the neighborhood behind us and dipped back low, skimming above a dirt road leading north.

Hmm. What to tell her? “Well… I know healing magic.”

“Killer. I heard about, what, swords, some kind of shield toss thing…”

“I can do bubble shields, too!”

“Just like a video game, bitchin’.” Amanda juked ‘til she was neck and neck with Jasminka. “Hey! Newbie can do bubble shields!”

“Just like in my brother’s favorite game,” Jazzy said, eating another Grumble Puff.

I perked up. “And I can do…”

_ Did you hear about that island with those alive watermelon people that discovered how to do Watermelon Steven sacrifices? Also, a friend of mine died and I kinda made them alive again except they’re also a magic monster like my pet Lion that I have! _

I faked still being perked up. “...you know, lots of cool stuff. I’m like a hat trick. Times a hat trick. Nine tricks.”

“And that’s fresh off the boat, huh?” Amanda asked. “You’re gonna crush it at Luna Nova. I bet Finny creamed her jeans at the sight of you.”

My stomach turned, and we bobbed wildly as my mass control went haywire. So much for faking the perk-up. “Actually, I don’t think I did very well at all,” I said.

“You didn’t, huh?” Amanda said. “Figures. School’s a fuckin’ waste of time anyway. If it weren’t for Cons and Jazz and Akko and all her wacky buddies, I might as well have not even shown up.” There was a beat. “Anyway. Don’t sweat it. Akko bounced back, you can too.”

“How bad did Akko do?”

“She got shot in the kidneys her first day of school.”

“...she what?”

Amanda laughed. “She took a bullet for these magic butterfly whatevers, so get this, Diana Cavendish shot her right through the kidney with a Murowa spell. She had to get a new one from Nurse Horowitz. Told me sight unseen that she had to–”

“Wait, wait,” I said. “What spell was that?”

“‘Murowa.’ Basic killin’ spell. Wanna practice it?” Constanze had turned left and onto the grounds of what a sign said was Middlewick Holiday Cottages.

“Think I’ll have a reason to use it?” I said as we turned into the place.

“Well, we gotta eventually.”

I unlatched my wand. I was aware of the weight of my sword, and I had a sudden hankering to call my shield out, too. Ah, man, if only I were Smoky Quartz right now.

I settled with conjuring my shield and taking aim, like Finneran taught me, centering a dark window between the tines. Then I noticed the line of smoke rising into the sky.

Amanda flicked her own wand out –

* * *

In the darkening skies above Glastonbury, Lotte blurted “Phrasing!”

“Focus up, Lotte,” Sucy said. She had a monocular pressed to her open eye. “I see some movement down there that isn’t Akko and Diana.”

“Oh!” Lotte said. “Where?”

“Over at the Tomb of King Arthur. Some guy, I think. Are you seeing those statues, too? Or is it just me?”

* * *

– and said, “What’d I say? Time to do some harm.”

Constanze turned off her searchlight. Jazzy’s snack bag disappeared. We veered off the road and snuck up around the side, using the cottages as cover. Me and Amanda pressed flat against the roof, peeking just above to look down on the courtyard.

There was a bonfire built in the center of the complex. There were ten figures standing in a circle around it, perfectly symmetrical. I thought they were people in masks. I peered, and the more I looked the more I saw…

I’m not sure what I saw. They were still, perfectly so, like mannequins. Maybe they were really creepy scarecrows. Like, scarecrows for monsters.

“Shit,” Amanda whispered.

“What are they?” I said.

“I have no idea. That’s probably bad.”

“So what do we do?”

Amanda huffed. “Wait for Constanze. See if she has any ideas.”

We scanned the opposite rooftop. We could see a little movement. After a good long time – maybe five minutes – Constanze raised her hand up and chopped at the clearing. Go? That was a go. Amanda flew over the roof and towards the figures around the fire.

The scarecrow-mannequins had looked humanlike at a distance, but they were less so the closer we got. They looked like they were made from tar mixed with straw and white clay. They had thick arms and legs mushed into the ground like the ends of melted candles. There were long lines drawn along the edges of their arms and legs, thick on the legs, lots of thin ones on the arms. They had flat objects pressed on their faces – I saw a license plate, a street sign, an antler that had been ripped free of a mounted animal head and pressed onto a blank, featureless face. Teeth and things that sorta looked like teeth – forks, knives, sticks – were arranged in large circles on their chests.

Amanda poked one with her wand. “The hell are these?” she said as Jasminka and Constanze floated in.

“Maybe they’re monsters,” Jasminka said. “And they are very patient.”

“Let me try something,” I said. Wand or sword, Stevonnie? Sword. I drew Rose’s blade and prodded the statue Amanda had poked. The point sunk into its arm without much effort and through that into its side. It had a feeling like clay, with little crunchy things I felt snap or cut as the sword passed through them.

I felt it tense up –

I yanked the sword free and the thing didn’t move an inch. It was rooted to the spot. No sign of the cut regenerating in the crackling firelight.

“Okay,” Amanda said. “Just something left behind to be creepy.”

“Monsters like to be spooky,” Jasminka said, nodding.

Constanze grunted.

I flicked the sword in a wide arc behind me, splashing away the blood dribbling along the blade.

...I mean, of the stuff that the statue was made of. It wasn’t blood.

“Alright,” Amanda said. “Let’s look for some survivors, tell ‘em the monsters with the art project are gone.”

We spent some time looking in every cabin, behind overturned furniture, under beds, in closets and attics. There were broken plates and cricket bats, knives missing out of blocks. Windows smashed in and blankets draped halfway out of them. Escape? No, like they were still coming off.

We didn’t find a lot of blood. But we found some, smeared along that broken window, pooled in a kitchen and trickling out the door until it stopped a few feet out.

No survivors.

“Slow night,” Amanda said as we met back at the fire. “Figures.”

I looked at the statue I’d stabbed and a terrible thought crossed my mind. “What if the statues are actually people?” I said. “Magically transformed or something?”

“Huh!” Amanda said. “Could they be?”

Constanze shrugged.

“It’ll be fine,” Jasminka said. “The Ospadal Buidsichean will be by in the morning. They’ll undo curses, fix stuff…”

“If they _ are _ people… will they remember?”

“I wanna say… no?” Amanda said. She looked at Cons, who nodded.

“Because their brains aren’t made of brains anymore,” Jazzy said, nodding. She popped a new Grumble Puff into her mouth. “When they get fixed their brains start again!”

“What if they don’t, though?” I said. Good job, brain, could that sound any more vague...

“Man, you ever slow down with the questions?” Amanda said.

“Please, they’re new,” Jasminka said, floating over and pinching my cheek. I blushed. For being … teenaged?... Jasminka had the air of a doting grandma. Sort of like a taller Nanefua – wait, was I thinking that just ‘cause Nanefua kind of feels like a doting pizza grandma-mayor? Whatever, save it for later. “Don’t worry,” she said. “If they’re monsters or statues, we’ll recycle them or something. And if they’re people, they’ll be fine. And if they’re not fine, we can fix their memory with magic.”

“...Fix?”

Jazzy put her free hand to her head and mimed an explosion. “Pooooof. Out go the memories. And we take those bad ol’ memories to the Memory Hole where they’ll never hurt anyone again.”

Silence.

“You can fix lots of things with magic,” Jasminka said, smiling benignly.

“...yeah…” I said. “Let’s ride.”

No survivors.

Hopefully.

We rode into the last thread of light in the sunset.

* * *

_ 6-3. Consumables _

It was dark as midnight as we followed [the road toward Glastonbury](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbym7rIR7sc). No stars, no moon peeking between the clouds. We followed Constanze’s spotlight, and Jasminka and Amanda had added floating fairy-lights of their own to light the path. I tried to copy their spell and just wound up spraining my wrist from the effort. Damn it.

It was nothing but ancient trees and grass billowing in a breeze I couldn’t feel for long minutes. The only relief was in the form of single farm houses or tiny neighborhoods with ten houses apiece. All abandoned. No more fires.

In the last batch of houses before we hit the hospital, Amanda and I were assigned window-looking duty, and so we skimmed the rooftops while Jazzy and Cons handled the lower stories.

We passed by a pretty little house with a large round window, the witches’ waxing-full-waning moon-symbol built into the frame. Amanda’s light passed by the window, illuminating another tar sculpture standing inside the room. Its face was an animal skull, maybe a deer’s, shattered and arranged flat on its face.

I didn’t scream. I promise.

If anybody else saw more statues, they didn’t mention it. No people. No monsters, either. We were alone; more, most of the streetlights had been bashed in and no lights shone in any of the houses. On a cloudy night like this, the universe may very well not exist outside the reach of our lights. There was no sound besides the intermittent wind.

“...hey, uh,” I said. “Should we check in on the others?”

“Yeah, good call,” Amanda said.

Did I mention that we had these little earpiece thingeys like in all those movies and video games and stuff? Constanze gave me one before the group started splitting up. I activated mine. “Stevonnie, checking in. How are we doing?”

* * *

Akko kicked a stray pebble down the ancient stone staircase. “Hey,” she said. “Me’n Diana are at the Chalice Well. It’s all… it’s all honked up. I don’t know how to put it. Diana’s not taking it very well.”

Diana was at the base of the stairs. More, she was seated on the base of the stairs, staring at the… fountain? Ornamental pond? Akko didn’t know what to call it. But there were these seven little cups or like, vagina-looking flowers that guided a stream into a two-part pond-y thing that looked like a vertical Venn diagram where the bottom of it was one step below the overlap and the top circle. There had been a garden, flowers and bushes all around it, all up and down the hill leading to it, but now they were brown and brittle. The water was thick and oily, stinking of turpentine, something Akko could smell all the way from the ornamental well cover up the hill.

And there were four very creepy-looking statues standing around the pond, too. Those she didn’t need to have in her life.

“I remember that place,” Stevonnie said. “My – little sister – came here last year. It was nice… peaceful.”

“It’s technically peaceful,” Akko said. “Real quiet. But it’s dark midnight and there’s monsters, so that’s probably temporary. Or like a trap set by the monster.” She sighed. “Hang on. I gotta check on Diana. I have a feeling.”

She traipsed down the steps, her magic light following her, and took a seat next to Diana. Diana was resting her head on her knees, staring at the thick, gurgling flow of evil spitting into the pond.

“Hey,” Akko said.

Diana made an acknowledging sound.

“This is a holy place, right? You told me about it once, a while ago.”

Diana nodded.

“Some kind of…” She considered her next words carefully. “You said it was, like, a holy place even before humans got here, right?”

“Yes,” Diana said. “Shub-Niggurath had a thriving cult of serpent people here two million years before the K-T Extinction Event.” She pursed her lips. “It’s holy to the Black Goat of the Woods. Which means it’s holy to the Cavendish family.” She balled her fists. The prick of her fingernails against tender skin gave her focus. “And… now it’s become this.”

“Can we, like, re-sanctify it?” Akko said.

“I don’t know,” Diana said. “The aquifer is geologically unique. The qualities of the well give unique traits to the plants that grow. There is a thorn tree thousands of years old that blooms in winter… there are winter roses… and now the water has been putrefied. Maybe killing the monster will set things right. Maybe it’s already too far gone.”

Silence fell over them.

“We’re responsible for this, Atsuko. There would be no monster if we hadn’t awoken Yggdrasil.” Her voice began to quaver. “What use is – what use is magic, if it can’t thrive without – without breaking everything else? Without breaking its own beautiful things?” The tears broke free. “Did we save the world? Or did we just trade a knife for poison?”

Akko, hesitantly, put her hand on Diana’s shoulder and pulled her into a hug. “It’s gonna be alright,” Akko said. “I mean… boy, has it been a crazy week, and that was after a really friggin’ crazy couple days. It’s, like, I don’t know what I was expecting when I opened up the throttle on magic, but a nonstop monster stomp was definitely in like the bottom ten of things I was expecting out of it.” She laughed, a little.

Diana glanced at one of the scary sculptures.

“I – okay, I wished I could’ve said something more heroic. But… it’s just the first week. Plus a day or two. I guess a lot of jerks got a boost in magic, but so did a lot of cool people. Like the new kid! They’re cool, right?”

Diana nodded.

“Nobody got nuked, magic came back in force. It’s been a rough week, but it’s the first week of the rest of our lives. We can stitch all this up nice and tight, and things’ll get back to normal, and it’s more like normal plus, because magic’s back and things are gonna start changing for the better.”

Diana sighed, resting her head against Akko’s shoulder. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I am,” Akko said, resting her head against Diana’s. “I haven’t given up yet, and I don’t intend to. And if you’ll be here with me, I’ll double-never-give-up.

“You really do have a way with words,” Diana said, with a coy smile. “Not a conventional way, but a way, certainly.”

“Aw, thanks,” Akko said. “Now. All we have to do is find out who’s making these creepy statues, and then we tell them to stop. Politely but firmly. And if they don’t listen, we start punching.”

Someone spoke behind them. “Excuse me,” a man said, “but I happen–”

“MONSTER!” Akko said, leaping away from the stairs with Diana in her arm. She twisted mid-air and fired off a barrage of attack spells at the staircase. The monster/man/whoever leapt out of the way under the fusillade of energy bolts, and so Akko contributed to the ongoing defilement of a protected religious site by tearing up the staircase somethin’ fierce. Akko hit the landing hard and skidded along the stone pathway before gliding on the grass a good few meters away.

The guy who had snuck up on them stuck his landing with only a little fire on his shoulder, which he patted out. “Apologies!” he said. “You know, for all the times I’ve almost gotten shot, I should’ve learned to walk a little more loudly.” He was an older man, maybe in his sixties. He was broad-shouldered, lantern-jawed, hair grayer at the temples – he would be the picture of the classic gentleman adventurer if not for his unfortunate gin-blossom nose.

“Who the hell are you?” Akko said, wand still pointed at him. Diana was sizing him up. “Are you the monster that’s doin’ all this… monster stuff?”

“Would you believe I am a traveling enthusiast of the paranormal?” he said, adjusting his glasses to catch the glow of Akko’s floating witchlight.

“Oh yeah?” Akko said, climbing to a kneeling shootin’ pose. “Tell me something weird that only a witch would know!”

“The distinctive green glow of witchery is a form of radiation emitted when exotic nineteenth-dimensional matter decays in individual frames of 4D perception. Bonus: the exotic matter is popularly known as ‘mana,’ a term borrowed from Polynesian cultures and used erroneously, as mana is the possession and utilization of energy, not the energy itself.”

After a moment, Diana said, “He’s correct.”

“Okay,” Akko said, lowering her wand. “What in the H is going on?”

“...didn’t you just say ‘hell?’” the man said. “Why deescalate?”

“‘Cause I dang well feel like it!”

* * *

We floated over a line of trees to get to West Mendip Hospital. It was a humble, single-story place that looked more like a school back home – salmon-colored brick, blue-gray-green slanting roof, one big waiting room with glass walls to be more warm and open-feeling. There were tar statues spaced out evenly every twenty feet or so in the parking lot, all of them looking inward.

Constanze strafed the building, shining her light in the windows. Jasminka cast a spell that created a loudspeaker of pink energy at the tines of her wand, which blew out like something in a cartoon as she spoke: “Hello! We’re friendly witches from Luna Nova! Is anyone in? Knock twice! Or shine a light! Or something!”

“Real confident there, Jazzy,” Amanda said.

“If I sound too confident,” Jazzy said, “I’ll sound like a monster playing pretend to be me. Sneaky monsters are bad at being casual!”

“Hang on,” I said. “I’ll try knocking, see if that does anything.”

“Your funeral, pal,” Amanda said with a grin.

She dipped low to the ground and I hopped off; Amanda sent her magic light after me, which hovered behind my shoulder and cast a warm glow in front of me like a cozy old flashlight. I crept toward that hospital entrance, giving the creepy statues a wide berth. As I got close enough for the windows to be less reflective and more translucent in the magic light’s glow, my earpiece went off.

“Hey, guys!” Akko said. “We found a neat guy! He knows about the thing that’s happening! Here, hang on, lemme hand this off to him.”

There was a moment of fumbling. I took that moment to consider my surroundings. You know, take the lay of the land, make sure there wasn’t anything behind me.

There was, though. One of the statues was over my right shoulder. Its face was a parking sign facing the wrong way, nothing but shiny steel and screw bosses. There was something hanging from its neck.

I squinted. Hey, I thought. A keycard, like something out of a video game.

“Hello?” an older man’s voice chimed over the radio. Or whatever it was. “This is Stanford Pines, reporting. Am I coming in? Over.”

“Yeah, I can hear you,” Sucy said over the line.

“Excellent! You’ll be pleased to hear the Wild Hunt removed most of the monsters two days ago. Unfortunately, the one they missed is no slouch. It’s called [the White Cyclosa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WekZ3sFsTNg).”

I drew my sword and held it out in front of me, just in case the statue had any bright ideas. I crept forward, keeping an eye on it for any sudden movements. Just in case, you know?

“You’ve seen these mannequin-like figures it’s been leaving, right?” Stanford said. “Whatever you do, do not go within–”

Something soft and wet brushed past my leg. I looked down.

The soft, wet thing rushed up my leg, locking on tight. I swung my blade and a powerful, many-fingered hand seized me by the wrist. I made the mistake of looking up as the sign fell away.

I looked into darkness. A smear of black darker than the tar the statue had been made of, darker than the dead sky above. Something was wriggling on its chest like maggots in roadkill.

I screamed.

It spread something like wings, and it flew. I could just hear Amanda shouting in shock, a sound immediately lost to the shrieking of wind past my ears. We were moving, fast, too fast. My vision went gray –

When I came to, maybe seconds later, there were stars overhead, a low and sullen moon, clouds at my feet. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe –

Against the starry sky the White Cyclosa was a void darker than space. Looking at it hurt, like staring at the sun. It was huge, maybe twice my height, with too many arms all ending in groping, bony tentacles. Teeth grew from its chest,more than I could count, wriggling through semi-liquid flesh as if alive.

I tried to swing my blade at it, and with gentle pressure it cracked my wrist. The spike of pain caught my scream in my throat and stars of shock blotted out my vision. My wand was at my waist, my shield in my gem. I tried to call up a bubble, I tried to cry for Lion, for Garnet, for my mother, for anyone and anything that could help, and when the Cyclosa decided it was time, it pressed my head to its chest.

A score of fresh teeth grew from its chest, curving inward to close in on my neck. It stroked my hair as they gnawed away my throat. Blood and light gushed from my neck, choked my lungs–

The teeth grew, kept growing, burrowed into my–

* * *

Stevonnie died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are now accepting auditions for New Main Character.


	7. MGC 5501: Advanced Monster Hunting (Laboratory)

_ 7-1: Experiment _

Connie seized her throat with both hands, and it was intact, she could breathe–

No, she still couldn’t breathe. She was falling. The White Cyclosa blotted out the stars, rapidly receding as she–

Oh shit, as she was tumbling through the air in a partial Luna Nova school uniform. Screaming resumed. Every blink painted the image of the White Cyclosa in her vision, a blazing white mark like the inverse of the black spots after a bright flash of light.

She flailed for–what? For a safety net? For a rope? For a solid cloud or friendly Care Bear paw?  _ Focus, Maheswaran! You can do this! _

She gambled it all and felt around her waist, on the left.

_ Wand. You have your wand. _

That you can’t use.

Steven. Where’s–

Steven was to her 3 o’clock, with the moon at 12. He was locked in position, holding on to his mother’s sword. Wait, he can adjust his mass to float, why isn’t he–

He wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t moving.

_ He’s in shock. _

How do you maneuver in the air without a parachute? Fall like a skydiver to maneuver, aim for trees or snow or a swamp, or–

The clouds were rushing to meet her. _No time._ _You have a wand._

She spun in the air ‘til her back was to the clouds. She took the wand with both hands, working it loose, and it came free, and sprung open without any effort whatsoever.

_ Alright, Maheswaran. You have one shot. _

Time slowed.

_ My body is not my own. It is borrowed carbon. _

_ My will is not my own. It is blurred by fingerprints. _

_ My wand is not my own. It is burning starstuff. _

_ I am one single member of a species of semi-hairy apes rapidly eating itself out of house and home, I am in love with someone who is part alien overlord. Monsters are real, magic is real, and Connie Maheswaran is a short-lived phenomenon that can and will make this goddamn happen. _

She opened her eyes, took a breath, and roared to the dying Earth: “ _ STRAHL _ !”

Intent connected to arm.

Indigo light burst from the tines of her wand, rocketing her at a sixty-degree angle toward Steven Universe, adjusting for relative velocity. No monster, no monster, no monster–

They were through the clouds and for a few horrible moments there was only freezing-cold fog and ice, but when the clouds cleared Steven was in reach, and in the flickering purple light she could see his eyes were open.

She grabbed him by the shoulder, the spell cutting off as she pulled him into a hug. “STEVEN!” she said, struggling to defeat the sound of the wind.

“Connie?!” he said. “Are we dead?!”

“Not today,” Connie said, and she cradled his head and, with Rose’s sword between them, forced his mouth to hers.

He froze in her arms, and the jackhammer-beat of her heart came to an abrupt stop--

* * *

– and I was whole.

I turned around, wand in one hand, sword in the other. I saw the world rush to meet me, lights burning intermittently in Glastonbury. I aimed at the base of the hill leading to the Tor, figuring that was as good a place to start as any. I righted myself, feet aimed at the world, and began to lower my mass, making a gentle descent. No whiplash today, no breaking anything.  _ Breathe normally. You have this, and you even lost the White Cyclosa _ –

– it burst through the cloud layer, fast as a stroke of lightning, and on me with similar fury and force. I dodged, I swung, and I felt the blade bite deep and cleave a chunk of it away.

It streaked past me, plummeting toward the earth and vanishing in a flash of shadow. I blinked and the white smear behind my eyelids had gone.

I could breathe again. Actually breathing normally took a little doing. I had to get back to ground, out of the sky. And away from any of those horrible horrible statues.

After a few more seconds of falling, my earpiece came back to life.

“Holy shit,” Sucy said. “I can see you. I’m on the way.”

“No need,” I said. “I got this.” Did I, though? “Did you see where the Cyclosa went?”

“The–no, I didn’t.”

“Well, start looking, and don’t go near those statue things!”

“No  _ shit  _ don’t go near the scary monster statues. What am I, an idiot?”

I coughed. “Th–that’s not what I meant…”

“Apologies I wasn’t fast enough on the draw!” Stanford said. “Right! Don’t get within fifteen feet of any of those statues. Its tendrils can–”

“I know,” I said. “I was kinda there!”

Stanford muttered something. “Right–try to reconvene at Glastonbury Abbey. We can formulate a plan there!”

“I see a whole lot of pitch-black city,” I said. “Where can I–”

A burst of colorful light, like a flare, splashed down in a patch of land where there wasn’t even a hint of modernization.

“You’re welcome,” Sucy said. “Meet you there.”

I pointed the wand behind me, took a deep breath, and decided to arrive quickly, and in style. “ _ Strahl _ !”

...nothing.

“Aw, come on!” I said, and took the long way down.

* * *

Sucy met me halfway down and matched my speed. “Hey,” she said. “So, abducted by the monster, huh?”

I nodded.

“Tentacles?”

“...I think…”

“Tried to eat you?” Sucy glared at me.

“...maybe?”

“Lucky bitch.”

“No, I seriously wasn’t,” I said.

“Don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone…”

We set down in the remains of an abbey, its decay almost symmetrical. Ancient stone arches to my left and right, cool grass under my feet. There were no statues, no signs of anything unusual other than the lack of lights. Finally, I could breathe again. Actually breathe. I alternated between holding my breath and hyperventilating all the way down. That and several attempts at casting  _ Strahl _ … but that’s neither here nor there.

A few moments after I touched down, Sucy slipped the broom from under her and propped it on the grass. Lotte stayed up in the air a little while longer, keeping an eye out for enemy movement. Within a few minutes, Akko and Diana joined us, the guy they met just behind them. Magic lights danced around us, casting a warm glow over our meeting place.

“Hey!” Akko said. “Stev, you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, not quite believing myself. “Are you guys alright?”

“Never better,” Sucy said.

“Yeah, we’re cool too,” Akko said. “Wait, are you cool, Stanford? Did you get bit earlier or anything?”

“Just ‘Ford’ is fine,” Ford said. “And I’m just fine.” He looked around, adjusting his glasses. His gaze held on me a moment, scanning me head to gem. “Hrrrm.” He caught the light of the spells in his glasses, concealing his expression. “Alright, we’re going to need a strategy if we want to take on the White Cyclosa. Can you get in touch with the other witches?”

“I can, yeah,” I said, and hit the earpiece button. “Amanda? Jasminka? Anyone coming in?”

After a moment, Amanda responded. “You made it out alright?”

“More or less.”

“Rockin’. We’re booking it to the Abbey. We’re taking the long way around, Cons doesn’t want us near the Tor. And we’re steering clear of all the statues.”

“How many do you see?” I said.

“I think we’ve seen at least ten more since we saw you get carried off. Glad you’re okay.”

I swallowed heavily. “Yeah. I am now. Be careful, okay? Ford, what was that you said about bright lights?”

“Bright light transfixes the Cyclosa and prevents it from teleporting between bodies,” he said. “On a night like this, it could and can be anywhere. If it’s not attacking, it must be gathering strength now that it knows it’s dealing with witches.”

“So…” I said. “If it’s not full strength now… how strong is it when it’s fully-charged?”

“Unpleasantly so.”

“...Maybe try and bunker down somewhere you can light up nice, Amanda.”

“If I may?” Ford said, holding out his hand.

I took out my earpiece and handed it to him. Hey, why not.

“Thank you kindly. Ahem! Ms. Amanda, was it?” He spoke into the earpiece without popping it in.

“Present, dude. And skip to the good part, I saw what happened last time when you had a damn preamble.”

Diana and Akko closed in. Sucy slithered up, too, to get a better listen. Lotte finally joined the party, landing a short distance away and hiking up. Me, I joined in too. We all looked down at the little earpiece.

“What street are you on?” Ford said.

A pause. “Wells Road, it looks like.”

“Take a right onto Manor House Road, turn left onto Norbins, look for the only house where the lights are on. If the statue density is too high, shelter in place and give us your location. Keep the lights on, keep a 360 degree field of vision between the three of you – it was three, right?”

“Yessir!” I said. “Minus myself.”

“Excellent! Not quite as perfect as four, for a tactical diamond formation, you see, but three is a damn sight better than two. You must be vigilant. When the White Cyclosa starts to approach its attack phase, it will create more statues from a mix of condensed dark matter and local materials. Under normal circumstances it could create as many as a dozen statues in an area ten miles across. With the recent explosion in psychokinetic energy–”

“You’re welcome!” Akko said.

“–its power seems to have escalated well beyond its prior limits.”

“And by that I mean I’m sorry.”

“Do we understand?” Ford said.

“Got it, man. See you soon,” Amanda said.

Ford handed me my earpiece back. “Thank you kindly. Anyhow. I had a question to ask about your magic spells. Is it possible to create an extremely bright light with your current magic? Something in the realm of at least 3000 lumens?”

“Hmm… I got something for that,” Sucy said. “I’ve got a chemical mix that can pump out light on par with high noon. With a strong translucent container we could totally take ‘it’s night’ out of the equation.”

“I have one of those!” I said, making a little bubble in my palm to demonstrate.

“Cool,” Sucy said with no real interest. “So, how bad would a little magic sunlight fuck it up?”

“It wouldn’t be having a good time at all,” Ford said. “No teleportation, significantly impaired reflexes and sight…”

“Even moonlight slowed it down a little,” I said. At least, it hadn’t tried to kill me immediately after I split into my component parts. That meant it slowed down, right?

“Indeed, it would!” Ford said, nodding. “Once we have it dazzled, all we need is to deliver a considerable volume of kinetic energy into the target! At a critical depletion of mass it won’t be able to sustain–”

“Zap it ‘til it dies, got it!” Akko said, giving a thumbs up.

“...suppose that does sum it up,” Ford said. “Very well, all we need to do is make our sun, then deploy it when we have the White Cyclosa in a tactically advantageous position.”

“Afraid we have to make it in situ,” Sucy said. “These chems will glow like a bastard the second I mix ‘em and I only have enough for, uh…” She checked her pockets and pouches again. “...four minutes, tops. Six if we’re lucky. Two if we’re not.”

“Not insurmountable,” Ford said. He checked his watch for some reason. “Alright, your friends should be arriving at the rendezvous point now. If we make our way there, we’ll have a small army ready to take on the White Cyclosa.”

“It sounds like a plan,” I said. “Put it like that, it sounds downright simple.”

“It’s never as bad as it looks!” Akko said. “As long as we keep true to our believing hearts and give it our all, we’ll have this licked in no time! And also as long as we keep Mr. Ford from getting shot or something!”

“Ah, ah,” Ford said, opening up his jacket. “I’m not a helpless old tweed-jacketed investigator.” He pulled out what looked like a gun, getting everybody to back up a foot or so, especially me.

I bumped into something. I turned around and came face to broken-brick face with a White Cyclosa statue.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t think I’d live long enough to scream. When it became evident I wasn’t dead, I stumbled back and into Lotte, who had ducked behind me. [I made the mistake of looking around](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CT7mt7iTMk).

Dozens of statues were perched along the decayed walls of the abbey, which were now heavily pocked with stolen stone. They were spaced out on the lawn like chessmen. Further out, toward the city, our magic lights glinted off even more statues.

“Mother,” Diana whimpered.

“Oh, no,” Akko whispered.

I turned back around. The statue hadn’t moved.

Yet.

We backed into each other, wands out, Ford aiming his fancy science gun. We were surrounded. There was no safe place.

“Do you have enough reagents for multiple magic suns?” Ford said, slowly and clearly.

“No, sir,” Sucy said.

“Alright. Can you cast light spells of a smaller scope but similar potency? Something to discourage the White Cyclosa?”

“Will that really work?” I said. I brandished my sword at the statue. I imagined stepping forward to slice it in half and getting a lungful of teeth for my trouble. No. No sword. I called my shield instead, cowering behind it, waiting for the intruder to make a move.

“It… will not,” Ford said. “Purely for our benefit until we can actually light a significant chunk of the city.” He aimed down the sights at one of the statues. “Moses, I think that one twitched…”

“So we’re trapped ‘til daylight,” Sucy said. “Wonderful.”

“It won’t wait until daylight,” Ford said. “And besides, it’s not even 8:30.”

“...holy shit, it isn’t,” Sucy said, consulting her own watch. “We’re dead, we’re all so very goddamn dead–”

“We’re super not gonna die, Sucy!” Akko said. “Remember, a believing heart is–”

“–not gonna help!” Sucy said. “We don’t have two billion slack-jawed warm-blooded jackasses to loan us magic points through the TV!”

Behind the statue that ambushed me were yet more of them, dotting the grounds well out into the countryside. “Maybe… maybe one of us should try and piss it off. You know, get its attention, then…”

“Here and now?” Ford said. “We’re not at full strength, and it has all the room in the world to maneuver and enough cover to just duck into shadow and teleport out.”

“Well, what else can we do?!” I said. “I – I can take one attack. I did before. It… I can manage it. I’m tough…”

“Don’t go putting your head in the lion’s jaws just because you have a head to give,” Ford said. “I’ve been in dicier situations than this. We just have to  _ think _ .”

My earpiece fired off, shockingly loud, fuzzier than it had been. “Guys?!” Amanda said. “We’re pinned down, on… some goddamn street, I don’t –”

There was a terrible crash of metal. A moment later we heard it echoing from the street.

“Cons, on your left! Damn it – we can’t –”

The feed cut out entirely.

I breathed.

“You guys, all of you?” I said. “Get to the rendezvous point. I’m going after them.” I drew my sword. “I can take a hit. I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“You sure?” Akko said. “I could follow you. I’m pretty cool, and I can’t fly, either.”

I stepped forward, past Akko, past Ford. “I got away once,” I said. “I can do it again. I even cast a spell when I did it. I’m – I’m good to go.”

“Are you trying to convince us,” Diana said, “or yourself?”

I halted at the edge of the invisible circle we had made for ourselves.

“I… I can’t waste any more time…” I said.

“Then don’t,” Lotte said. “We believe in you.”

“Hell yeah!” Akko said.

“As the poet said,” Ford said, giving me a boy scout salute, “God luck and good speed.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I ran.

* * *

_ 7-2: Chemicals _

The grass was cool, slippery and wet under my bare feet. In two strides I sliced an effigy in half at the waist, then leapt as hard as I could, kicking against gravity as I soared across the plain to the city toward the direction of the sound. On the periphery of my vision the witches flew off in a skew direction, not far off from where I was aiming.

The arc of my jump ended in a little parking lot. I skidded on the ground just past a car parked across two spots, one door open and the other yanked off its hinges. I calculated the next leap and realized I had no real plan for whatever was about to happen.

Ten seconds. You have ten seconds. You don’t have ten seconds but you need to think.

Play defense. Bubble shield, shield, sword, don’t bother with magic, you can’t use it…

Connie can. Divide, conquer, lie about what you are later.

_ I can’t risk Connie and Steven. _

Why? They’re tough, but more importantly they’re faster than you.

_ Yes. But I can die. _

The cool night became bitter cold. My goosebumps felt like ice cracking on my skin.

I can die.

I can die, because…

I’m not real.

At best I’m a metaphor.

Okay. Okay. Jump. Fight. If you die, divide and conquer. Because you’re a discarding sabot for Steven Universe and Connie Maheswaran, and if you get broken, who cares? The package is safe. Now go and do your part, metaphor.

I thought it would be impossible to lift my foot from the cold, cracked asphalt. I couldn’t float with that weight on my shoulders, that thought holding me down like an anchor, stealing me from a sky I didn’t know I had overhead.

But by any god listening I flew like a missile, blade in hand, shield on arm, my heart pumping ice water.

* * *

Constanze fired off her spell into the fuse box. With an electric whine all the surviving lights in the little oval-shaped neighborhood burned to life, casting a surreal daytime glow like a baseball night game.

Amanda looked out from behind the car she picked out as cover. Cons was out in the open, but she had her blaster ready and no worry for ammo. She was pouring on magic, trying to do – something. She had a plan after the White Cyclosa wrecked her broom, but given the time she didn’t have any more time to relay it besides blurting “Plan” and hoping everyone had a plan segment to contribute.

She saw movement at the edge of the neighborhood’s halo of light. What was that spider-bat bastard up to?

“Guys,” Amanda said, pressing the earpiece so hard she could feel it rub against her eardrum. “We’re pinned down, on… some goddamn street, I don’t–”

She felt her fine hairs raise – her old thieving instincts, maybe – and she scrambled out of the way before a hurled car smashed into the one she had been hiding behind. There was an awful slushy skittering noise as the Cyclosa scuttled into the neighborhood.

“Cons, on your left!” she screamed. She aimed her wand as the Cyclosa reared back up onto its mess of tentacles. “Damn it – we can’t –”

A tentacle climbed up her leg and yanked her into the air. She yelped, letting go of the earpiece, and slashed her wand at the beast: “ _ Membelah! _ ” The spell split the air with a shrieking crimson bolt that hewed the tentacle away, just as the Cyclosa rushed into the sky as if yanked by some invisible thread. Her spell smashed into the far roof, sending a rain of tiles to the ground, and Amanda stuck the landing hard on her shoulder, crashing into well-beaten dirt.

Constanze fired up at the sky out of, judging by her expression, extreme annoyance. She ran across the street, gesturing for Amanda to follow. Amanda took the cue and hopped to her feet, racing after her and into the door Jasminka was holding open for them in the apartment complex. Once they were in she slammed the door shut and smeared melted Grumble Puffs over the lock she busted open to get in.

Either Cons’s spell had worked too well indoors or the person who lived here really did not give a crap about interior lighting. The lamps were dark, the ceiling lights dark. The living room, or whatever this front place was, had a new TV which was a vantablack square in the dim light, and an old cathode-ray TV that was on for some reason. It only picked up static, spraying a fuzzy pale blue light that failed to illuminate, only make the silhouettes of furniture and interior walls flicker and grow indistinct.

After a few seconds there was no monster crashing into the room. So they spoke at last.

“We good?” Amanda said, just above a whisper.

“Well, I’m alright,” Jasminka said.

Cons grunted in the affirmative.

“Cool. Do we wanna turn on a light? Or do we wanna give the impression we’re not here?”

“Well,” Jasminka said, “I don’t like the dark. And I am very spooked out.”

“That’s a vote for ‘light.’ Cons, what’s your take?” She moved away from the door and the window.

Cons crept across the floor, toward the TV. She nudged past a dropped plush toy, an old Mega Drive controller, and the Mega Drive it was plugged into, and felt for the TV’s switch. Correctly guessing the model, she flicked the switch to off. The TV flickered dark, as if blinking, and then resumed flinging its eerie light into the apartment.

“Looks like it wants to be light in here,” Amanda said. “Let’s start little and move up if we feel brave.”

She cast a lantern spell, producing light from her wand. She ran it along the living room, revealing a couch, an old La-Z-Boy, a nest of game consoles–

“Wow, they have a Switch,” Jasminka said.

“Shh,” Amanda said.

“I’m excited for them, is all…”

She ran the light along Constanze, who looked displeased, and into the next room. There was a set of stairs going up, and there was a kitchenette visible through an interior window in an interior wall. Whatever you’d call that, she wasn’t an architect and now wasn’t the time to learn. She probed to the left back in the room proper and illuminated a crudely-made statue carved from tar, its face an old, sun-bleached photograph in a cracked frame.

Jasminka covered her mouth.

“Alright…” Amanda said. “I’m turning up the–”

The picture fell away and the White Cyclosa filled the room.

* * *

There was a part of the town with the lights on now. It had all been black when I was in the air; I had a feeling that was where my friends had been trapped.

_ Your “friends.” Do they know you’re two kids in a coat with a stupid name? _

Shut the hell up.

_ You are a passing fancy, the print-preview for a future child. Another layer of separation from the truth nailed into your belly. _

“I said…” I muttered, and landed on Manor House Road just as the White Cyclosa tore free of a building.

It had wrapped two of its arms around Jasminka. She had magically swollen to the proportions of a Squishable plush doll; her expression was of pure misery. It couldn’t fly off with her, it looked like, but it was busily shredding her back with its chestful of teeth. Amanda and Constanze pursued it as it swept onto the lawn – or backyard? – of the apartment complex, spraying it with spells.

I called a shield and crashed into a Cyclosa statue to help with my landing. I shouted to get its attention.

It recognized me, I think. Its eye-searing bulk swiveled, and it spread its wings and arms, rearing back on its tentacle-legs. I did what came natural.

“Let her go, you monster!” I bellowed, and flexed a muscle I seldom used. Brilliant light shone from my gem, a pink spotlight splashing onto the White Cyclosa. It flinched, reeling back from me. It didn’t have any eyes, didn’t have much in the way of indicating what it was seeing, but it dropped Jasminka and slid over her, coming at me. It spread five arms; its wriggling tentacle-fingers went rigid and folded together, forming spikes.

I dropped my personal shield and ran for the beast, the light strobing with the shifting of my hips. The Cyclosa clamped its limbs around me–just in time to clatter against my spiked bubble shield.

Its grip slipped and I fell a few feet to the ground. My light dimmed as it passed through the shield, but it still had to glare directly at me to do anything to me. Come on, monster, try and break me.

Its tentacle-fingers became pliable again and it picked the bubble up. I stuck my tongue out at it, and it shook the ball like a can of spraypaint with me as the pea. I wish I could say I kept my dignity, but, no, I could do nothing but get bashed up by my own shield. When the White Cyclosa finally threw me into Amanda, I had enough sense left to pop the bubble, but not enough to stop from hitting her. I felt like a rag doll full of broken bones.

I struggled to roll off of Amanda, who helped push me off. “Good God,” she said, coughing. “He fucked you up good.”

I tried to breathe through a nose full of bloody snot. A nose I realized, by virtue of the direction of the throbbing agony, I had broken. “ _ Glarp _ ,” I said.

Sword. Where’s the sword…

I stood up. The Cyclosa flung a tire at me; I dodged, but not well enough, the tire smacking into my shoulder with a sharp  _ crack _ . The force sent me spinning and I fell to my knees. Too full of pain to do anything else I spat into my hand and rubbed it on my face, spat again and rubbed it on my shoulder, trying to straighten my thoughts, trying to focus. I need my sword, I need–

There was a terrible  _ crack  _ and a hail of sparks. The Cyclosa ripped a light pole free of its socket. Oh, now you’re fighting dirty? Or… did I give you an idea?

Jasminka fired magic bolts into it, and the monster slapped her to the ground with three tentacles across the chest. She landed in a bloody heap, struggling to breathe. It–

It was going to impale her through the back with the light pole.

It was going to kill her.

What could I do? Hit it with my shield? Run up to distract it? Hope that Amanda or Constanze could save her?

You have a wand.

_ A wand I can’t use. _

I grabbed it, ripped it free from my belt with the slowness of a nightmare where I could throw no punch that didn’t glide harmlessly across Jasper’s face, couldn’t throw my shield a foot when a gem amalgam closed in on Connie. The world was trickling to a stop. I was about to watch Jasminka die and all my senses kicked the brakes, the better to let me drink in every last moment of my failure, my absolute inability to fit in with this new world that had lived just fine without me and which had destroyed mine without a moment’s thought.

[The wand was hot in my hand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz9yfvrqNnA).

_ You can’t use it, you idiot. Connie could have, but you’re not her, are you? Steven and Connie could’ve handled this. What are you but a passing daydream? _

The wand telescoped out. It locked in place with a solid, dreamy click.

I am.

I  _ am  _ a daydream.

_ I have no body. I am the umbra of two shadows. _

_ I have no will. I am the umbra of two electromagnetic patterns. _

_ I have no wand. I am the umbra of flesh and light and burning starstuff. _

I am mana.

_ There are no bodies. Solidity is an illusion. We are all concentrations of vibrations in a universe which is an endless act of motion. _

_ There is no will. Intent without action is death. To act is to become. To be is to act. _

_ The wand is an oath: I am no thing as there are no things. The moon has one thousand faces because the moon is not one thing; it is an action, it is change, and even its patterns are impermanent, even the moon is impermanent, flying away from us in the cosmic dance. I am mother/maiden/crone, I am hunter/lord/prophet, I am male/female/both, I am two and three and one. I am not a metaphor; I am not a passing fancy. _

_ I am an experience. I am a  _ dream _ . I am a voice for an inner Truth more real than flesh and light and diamond. _

I framed the White Cyclosa’s chest between the tines of my wand.

_ I am Truth, and my Truth is this:  _ **I am Love.** And Love will abide no suffering to survive my gaze.

“ _ MUROWA! _ ”

My arm was my intent.

A burst of green light erupted from my wand. It struck the White Cyclosa center of mass, burned where it struck, and carried the monster with it, boiling through the air. When it struck the house across the street, the spell burst, a four-pointed blast of light erupting and bringing a noonday sun to Glastonbury.

The light faded. A few moments later, the street lamp crashed to the ground, so white-hot it crumpled when it struck the pavement and clattered into the grass, lighting a fire.

My head hurt. My heart hurt. My eyes, too; I had to wipe spit over them to decrease the flashbang effect. There was still a white blot behind my eyelids where the monster had done its blowing-up.

“–hey, new kid!” Amanda said, shaking me. “That was fucking cool! Are you alright?”

“I think…” I looked at her at last. Jasminka was there, too, just behind her, looking even happier than she seemed to be at all times of the day. “Hey, Jasminka… are you okay?”

She nodded. “Healin’ spell. I know one.”

“I’ll look you over later, okay?” I said. “Just to – you know – settle my nerves.”

“Aw, you’re too kind,” she said.

After a moment, I spoke what was on my mind: “Uh. I think I kinda sorta stopped existing there for a minute?”

“Oh, yeah, the ego death thing,” Amanda said, nodding. “Happens to everybody their first time, the whole ‘oneness dissolving into nothingness’ deal. It’s part of the package.”

“Is it gonna be like that every time?” I said.

“Nah,” Amanda said, with a dismissive hand gesture. “And most people drink the enlightenment out, anyway. Cosmic awakening is a suck-ass high.”

“Aw, don’t say that word!” Jasminka said. “That’s rude.”

“That’s the only rude word I said in that whole minute there, you weird smiley Russian broad?!” Amanda laughed. “Seriously, aren’t Russians fined for smiling?”

“Not a lot,” Jasminka said. “But it adds up.”

I giggled. It was a good feeling.

Constanze whistled. Or rather, we heard a whistling that turned out to be from Constanze, who was pointing her magic gun at the house I kinda-sorta ruined. Then she pointed at the street lights, which were now dark. Oh. Whoops. Must’ve hit the fuse box or something.

I blinked, and the blot was still burning white behind my eyelids. I blinked again, and the shape moved. The White Cyclosa reared back up onto its tentacle cluster, slowly, but with great malice and potence.

I felt something press into my hand. I looked; Jasminka had found my sword, and held it out to me, the pommel gently pressing into the skin between my thumb and forefinger. “Eh?” she said. “Eh?”

I took my blade in my right hand and my wand in my left. “You guys ready?” I said.

“Not really,” Amanda said, aiming her wand. “But let’s tuck this bastard in anyway.”

“Agreed~” Jasminka said, taking a two-handed grip.

The funny thing about the Doppler effect is that we didn’t hear the truck until it rammed into the White Cyclosa, followed by [the roar of rock ‘n roll](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnLuvaSXfig) through its speakers.

Ford was in the bed of the truck, by the way, which had a mattress wedged against the cab to catch him when they stopped. Stopped because the truck ground to a halt as it ground the Cyclosa under its wheels, you see. “Hello!” he said. “I’m the nice man from the radio!”

“Who can’t fuckin’ skip to the good part to save his life!” Amanda shouted.

“I’m… I’m working on that!” Ford said.

“Hey, kids!” Sucy said, hopping out of the truck with a trio of flasks in her hand. “Wanna do this sun thing or not?”

The Cyclosa shoved the truck off itself, its driver rolling out the far side and Ford hopping off just behind Sucy.

“Ready!” I said. “Throw it in the air!”

Sucy did just that. “Pull!” she shouted.

Seemed like everybody knew what that meant; Jasminka didn’t leave her hanging, shooting the flasks with a spell. I conjured a bubble as the chemicals reacted in mid-air, filling it up in an instant. Overhead on a broom, Diana shouted a spell and the bubble lifted up high; Lotte sang and a pair of air spirits (or so I assumed) held the orb in place.

And then the sun really rose over Glastonbury.

All the world around us was lit with a warm noontime glow, the noon of a beautiful spring day where the wind is cool and the sun is warm. The White Cyclosa was thrown into stark relief, its ambiguous form given defined limits. It had a body-plan like a spider, I could see, with the third set of limbs extruded into wings, its plump abdomen pulled apart and rolled into tentacles. It stumbled away from the sudden dawn, reeling and cringing like a trapped cockroach.

Akko jumped off of Diana’s broom, screaming something I couldn’t hear–

* * *

Truth be told, Akko had completely tuned out when she climbed onto Diana’s broom, all in favor of trying to think of the coolest thing to say when the boss fight began. Her attention returned only briefly when they met Ford’s brother, who looked like a funhouse mirror version of Ford, with bigger arms, skinnier legs, jug-handle-ier ears and a nose like that one specie of monkey with the big red nose. You know the one, right?

Anyway, what he said was: “Don’t ask any questions, but I need to not-have this on me if the police show back up--” And Akko took his offering of a magic boon and sank back into a haze of one-liner planning.

Scant seconds later, when the magic sun rose over Glastonbury, she jumped off of Diana’s broom, chainsaw screaming over her head, and she shouted, “ _ Saw- _ rry to interrupt! I mean  _ cut  _ in!!”

Thankfully, nobody could hear her--

* * *

–over the roar of the chainsaw she planted in the Cyclosa’s center of mass.

The monster staggered, nearly knocking Akko off, but her grip on the chainsaw was too strong. She tried to stand on the it, but her feet kept sliding off its slick hide. The White Cyclosa formed its tentacles back into spikes and flailed at her. All the witches poured on spells, energy bolts and sheets of webbing and glowing chains knocked or grappled the limbs away as Akko carved away a thick slice of the White Cyclosa and fell to the ground. She made a break for it, but tentacles slipped around her and squeezed.

“ _ Strahl! _ ” I said, and the recoil of the spell sent me skidding across the asphalt and dirt of the little street. Purple light pulsed from my wand, striking the White Cyclosa in its thoraxy part. It pushed against the concussive force, the spell soon tearing clean through it and further wrecking the damaged house behind it. It flung itself into the air, half-flying; I tried to follow it with my spell and just threw myself to the ground, but I had enough focus to cut Akko free. The driver--real mountain of a guy--caught her as she fell and punted away the severed tentacles as they tried to latch on once more.

Trailing ichor, the White Cyclosa turned itself toward Diana and Jasminka, who were clustered the closest, and dove at them.

Diana leaped out of the way, tucking and rolling across the grass, while Jasminka tripled in size; the Cyclosa’s spike jab to her midsection sent her bowling away, but with most of her blood on the inside. It turned its attention to Constanze, who was charging up a spell; she fired it off and mystic chains wrapped around her target, anchoring it in place.

It planted itself and flexed, cracking the chains one by one as I got back to my feet. I tried to rack my memory for what anyone had said, for more spells I could sling.

“Duck!” Stanford shouted. I looked in the direction of his shout. He was a few yards away, his science gun trained on the White Cyclosa, and an entire lamp post--a second one from a little down the block--was levitating a half-inch in front of the bent prongs of his weapon, jagged metal and wire pointed at our enemy. I listened to him, taking a knee, narrowly avoiding a chain flung through where my head had been a split second earlier.

And with a mighty electric  _ whump,  _ Ford speared the lamp post through the White Cyclosa’s side.

From my side of the monster, Amanda shouted: “ _ Leva Rukamunje _ !”

A stroke of red lightning tagged the pole jutting through the Cyclosa. From the other side, Jasminka rolled up and fired off her own spell: “ _ Desna Rukamunje _ !” Red lightning lashed from her wand, hitting the other end of the pole, the lightbulb burning sun-bright before exploding. The Cyclosa convulsed.

The light began to gutter overhead.

“Guys, we’re running out of time!” Sucy said, flinging potions at the monster. They burst into brilliant flames where they splashed.

“Finish it off!” Amanda shouted. “Pour it on!”

The lamp post was going from silver to red, beginning to turn orange where the bolts collided. The monster forced itself to slosh closer to me; Ford and Constanze pelted it with random metal objects (Ford) and a scorching laser beam from her magic gun (Cons), shouting invectives (Ford) and blowing raspberries (Cons) to try and get its attention away from me.

“Akko,” Diana said, “take my hand. We’ll need a fusion spell.” She held out her right hand.

“Catch!” the driver said, and flung Akko at Diana like an Olympic hammer thrower. Akko arced over the thrashing Cyclosa, which swung an impaling limb at her and narrowly missed; she spun in midair and landed on her feet, Diana catching her hand as she fell. She twirled Akko into an embrace with both witches aiming their wands at the Cyclosa.

Lotte landed next to me, casting aside her broom. “Follow my lead,” she said, aiming her wand. “Elbow to elbow!”

“I haven’t done this before,” I said. “Please be gentle.”

She gave me a little, squirrely smile. “Phrasing,” she said.

Diana squared her stance. “ _ Ein ein sof! _ ” Golden light burned around her wand.

Akko stood beside her, her wand held out straight like Dirty Harry, her chainsaw held wide out back like a counterbalance. “ _ Ein sof ohr! _ ” A matching aura flared around her wand, coiling playfully around Diana.

“ _ Ilmarinen, kuule hudoni! _ ” Lotte said.

“ _ Ilmarinen, kuule hudoni _ …” I repeated.

I felt our arms lock together, as if someone were holding them in place. Orange sparks spurted from our wands.

“ _ Vasara sielun epäpuhtaudet! _ ” Lotte said.

“ _ Vasara, sielun… ep-ow-puhtadet _ !” I said.

The sparks built into a thick cloud of burning ash and scalding flakes of iron.

The lamppost went from orange to yellow and drooped, melting out of the wound. The lightning spells fell at last and the White Cyclosa reared up, ready to attack.

“ _ Luna Lana! _ ” Akko and Diana said, and a double helix of shining golden magic drilled into the monster.

Lotte and I spoke as if we had discussed the spell beforehand, the words leaping into my head unformed: “ _ Viimeistely Liekki! _ ”

A whirlwind of sparks and ash spewed from our wands, washing over the White Cyclosa; a moment later a furious wave of flame sparked from them and traveled along the powdery matter, igniting a vicious firestorm that banished the freezing winter night.

It never made a sound. But we watched the two spells boil away its mass, tentacles and arms and inky bulk broiling into nothing. I would’ve felt bad, but… no. I wouldn’t have under any circumstance short of finding out it was Santa Claus in a Chuck E. Cheese costume that had fallen in tar.

The others cut off their spells one by one; Lotte and I cut ours last. I blew steam from my wand’s tines and hoped I hadn’t damaged it.

The White Cyclosa was like a house after a fire. Things like bones and raw muscle smoldered. It struggled to step toward me on tendrils that were nothing but scorched, wiry tendons. Its teeth twitched and struggled to grow.

The driver cracked his knuckles and stepped forward. “Okay, enough’a that,” he said. “Left cross!”

His left cross cracked the Cyclosa’s chest-jaw to powder, starting a chain reaction that reduced it to a pile of ash.

He pulled what looked like a juice box out of his front shirt pocket, jabbed a straw into it, and took a sip. “Yep… that’ll teach ya.”

All around us, its effigies lost their form, dissolving to nothing, the random objects used in their construction clattering to the ground.

The artificial sun perished at last, and I dismissed my bubble. The depleted contents splashed onto the Cyclosa’s remains, smelling like the time Amethyst ate a bunch of glow sticks and bottles of Ramune and then tried to “puke up a rave.”

The moon peeked through the clouds.

“Did we do it?” Akko said.

Diana fell to the ground, taking 1) Akko with her, and 2) a hard landing on her backside. She laughed. “I have a feeling we did.”

“Hot damn!” Amanda said, firing her wand off into the air.

Constanze did a very particular fist pump. I recognized that fist pump, because I too saw that movie, and it was cool. I mirrored her, and she returned a knowing smile. It was the first time I had ever actually seen her smile. It was an amazing sight.

Jasminka hugged me from behind, which I appreciated. “Thank you for saving me,” she said.

“Anytime,” I replied. I spat in my hands, rubbed them together, and returned the hug, picking her up like a teddy bear. She made a nervous gasp when I touched her, but as the scars from the monster healed at my touch the gasp turned into an excited giggle. She nuzzled her face into my cheek, and that was just fine by me.

“Good job, everybody,” Ford said, clapping. “You tucked that right in. Glad to have helped!”

“And I’m glad to have hotwired a truck!” his brother said, slapping Ford on the shoulder. “It’s been too long. Also, thank you, citizen I do not know the name of, for having a decent-sized truck in Tinytown, UK. I sure hope you’re one of the guys we got to the hospital and, uh–”

I felt a warm drop splash on my head. The moon had again been occluded by clouds. Akko blinked. “Hey, the sky just spit on me!” she said.

“That’s called ‘rain,’ dumbass,” Amanda said.

“I was doing a one-liner!” Akko said. “I’ve been doin’ ‘em all night! Gotta have a bunch if you’re–”

Several more drops began to hit me, and I recognized the smell. It had clogged up my nose something fierce just a few minutes ago.

Ford’s brother sniffed. “Hm. Yep. Time to steal another car. Children, help me find a van.”

* * *

_ 7-3: Cleanup _

The return trip was slow going. And by “return trip” I mean “to where Ford and his brother Stan were staying,” which was just a few minutes away under normal conditions, but much slower when it was raining blood. Not just a little blood, a whole lot of it. The van’s wipers, even with Stan emptying the cleaner fluid tanks, could only do so much. The world outside the windshield was a gruesome haze.

“Any of you kids got a cell phone?” Stan said, for he was at the wheel. “Because I don’t wanna be the guy who just kidnapped a car full of witches again.”

“I can inform the school,” Diana said, pulling out her phone. “All things considered, I don’t think they would object to waiting until after the, uh…”

“The blood rain!” Akko said.

“I was summoning up a euphemism, but yes, the rain of blood,” Diana said, hunt-and-pecking a text.

“Where are you staying at?” I asked.

“Nice little place!” Stan said. “They call it  _ Thrillgrims,  _ The Bed And Breakfast Of Thrill-Pilgrims at the House of Priestesses.”

“I think we own it now, actually,” Ford said. “The proprietor did say ‘it’s yours now’ when he threw the keys at us and drove out of town screaming, right?”

“I mean,” Stan said, “if we’re gonna be stuck here ‘til the monsters stop happening, we might as well get a side hustle going.”

“I heard ‘side hustle,’” Amanda said, leaning in close.

“You heard indeed,” Stan said. “Are you willing to work for a pittance~?”

“I’ll just steal from the till.”

“Takes a more cast-iron pair of ovaries to steal from me than you got, Ginger Lemon,” Stan said gregariously.

“I got more and heavier junk than you know what to do with,” Amanda said, grabbing her crotch.

“Gettin’ weird, lookin’ ahead again,” Stan said.

Amanda chuckled.

Someone else had tapped out of the conversation before I did. In fact, I didn’t feel any disharmony at all when I looked Amanda over. That felt like a bonus victory. The cherry on top.

I rested my head against the side of the van, listening to the rain and pretending it was just regular water-rain, and for the first time since I’d woken up, was at peace.

It didn’t take a lot of time before my brain, uncomfortable with the stillness and calm, decided to throw me a curveball, something to make sure I wasn’t getting too comfortable.

[ Was I real? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptiofd3x-cE)

Was anything real?

Maybe “real” was fuzzier than I thought. Maybe there were depths of magic I was afraid to look into; even now the seconds leading up to my first spell were growing gray and distant, like an important dream stolen by the morning sun.

“...Mister Ford…” I said.

“Mm?” he said.

“You know a lot about, like, monsters and stuff? And magic?”

“I’ve had my investigations into the arcane, yes.”

I considered my next words.

“Is love real?”

“Come on, kid,” Stan said, “you don’t have to lowball it. It’s been a slow night.”

Ford chuckled. “I’ve been a lot of places. I’ve seen a lot of things. Survived a lot of things I had no right to live through. I can say with all confidence that love is the most real thing in the universe.” He looked at his brother, who was grinning even as he drove through the coagulated rain. “In my humble opinion, mankind truly came into its own when it realized the tickle of oxytocin wasn’t just a chemical reaction. That it _ meant _ something to protect your children, to stay with someone the rest of your life, to put your life on the line for all mankind, not just your tribe. The stars don’t know love. The gods don’t know love. But  _ we _ do. Our first invention, and our greatest work of magic. Love makes life worth living, and nothing can ever truly die who is loved.”

The van rattled over a small bump in the road.

“...then I must be real,” I said, softly.

The love of Steven for Connie, and Connie for Steven. The love of my family. The love of Rose Quartz that made all of it possible. I was all of it.

“You have a good heart, kid,” Ford said.

“But, do you have a good back?” Stan said. “Because this part is going to be a little bit tricky, and I might need one of you to grab the hitch.”

“Grab wha--” I said, just as Stan slammed his foot on the gas and violently reversed into the brick fence outside the Priestesses House.

With a lack of traction thanks to all the blood, he only managed to get us very stuck, with the rear hatch crumpled shut against the bumper.

“...yay!” Stan said. “We’re all alive!”

“I have whiplash now,” Sucy said, “and I’m suing you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TUTORIAL COMPLETE
> 
> Congratulations to Stevonnie for winning last chapter's auditions, carried out with a minimum of threatened bodily harm to the authors.


	8. A Curious Picture You See With Your Eyes Closed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!!!
> 
> This chapter has a nightmare sequence that includes imagery of abuse with strong negative sexual overtones. If you wish to avoid it, It is entirely contained within the section beginning "It was a beautiful day at school" and ending after the next horizontal line break.

_ 8-1: Bubble Blessings _

It took a little feeling around, but I finally wrenched the rear hatch of the van open. The door pneumatically rose, revealing a short two-yard walkway up to a house barely lit by the van’s interior lights. Thrillgrims was a two-story brick building with a steeply-angled roof that sent torrents of blood pouring into the paved entryway. While there was a decent amount of drainage, blood, as you may have heard, is thicker than water, so there was nearly an inch of standing blood between us and the front door. The falling blood was so warm in the winter night that steam rose off it in coppery-smelling clouds.

“Hrrrrm,” Ford muttered.

“Well, kids,” Stan said, “looks like we’re in a puzzle situation.”

“Let’s just run for it,” Amanda said. “Come on, like none of us have been covered in blood before? Back me up, Stev.”

“I’m not wearing shoes,” I said.

“Well, that’s your problem,” Amanda said.

“It’s also unclear what kind of blood is raining,” Ford said, “if indeed it has only one source. Not only is it unhygenic, it may actually be diseased! So I must recommend we avoid putting feet in it if we can manage.”

“Also,” Jasminka said, “I just don’t want to walk in and under blood.”

I stared at the doorway. I cleared my mind and focused on creating a bubble that wasn’t the regulation shape. I held out my hands, miming the molding of a vase from clay.

“The traditional spell for harsh weather is _ Bolosar, _” Diana said. “It’s individual, however. Our new friends would be left helpless before the weather.”

A little pink bubble formed in midair between us and the B’n’B. I concentrated first on making it bigger, then on squeezing it out thin, like a snake. Blood spattered off the sides with a crisp sound, like bouncing off a plastic tarp.

“Can we fusion-spellify ‘em?” Akko said. “So we can like, do the ultimate umbrella spell?”

“You can’t just ‘fusion-spellify’ magic,” Diana said. “Certainly you can combine spells for maximum effect, but–”

“Hey!” I said.

The team turned to look at me.

“Tunnel,” I said, gesturing grandly to the tube-shaped bubble I had linked from the van’s back door to the front door of Thrillgrims. It was shaped like a rearing-up snake rather than a straight-shot cylinder, but really, who would complain?

Other than Stan because I had to widen it out for him so he wouldn’t get stuck?

One by one we piled into the bubble-tube, Ford taking the lead so he could unlock the door and get us inside. I was the last, dismissing the bubble just as I hopped into foyer. As it made a longer-than-usual _ p-o-p-p-p _, I reflected on how cool it was to just be me.

Ford locked the door behind us and we took a moment to scrub ourselves off. Jasminka doted on us individually, magicking off dirt and bloodstains (mostly our own) and mending damaged uniforms. She took special care to clean up my face, particularly my nose. I must’ve looked like a vampire that heard a really funny joke while drinking blood.

Diana finished it off with a spell: “_ Blossom Freshness _.” Two cherry-blossom petals emerged from the tip of her wand and connected, forming butterfly wings. The petal butterfly fluttered over our heads, raining down a mystic rain that left us feeling clean and comfortable. The scent of cherry hung around us, like we’d all used the same flavor of body wash.

And now that we felt less like collections of bruises and more like human beings, we secured the LZ. The front room of the Thrillgrims House was a guest lounge. I’d never been to a bed and breakfast, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the lounge was like a strange, rich old uncle’s house, with a living room-kitchen combo deal with multiple big sofas gathered around a fancy TV and fireplace. Diana took a guest information sheet and scouted around, looking for useful things or secret monsters. The first order of business for the rest of us was blocking the outside world.

Akko swished the shades shut on the last window. “Voila!” she said. “And now we can pretend like [it’s just rain outside](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vQcKzdl0ow)!”

“Sure, if that’s what you’re into,” Sucy said as she peeked through the curtains of the window she’d called. “Boy, it’s coming down. Not tapering off at all, man…”

“Oh, guys!” Lotte said, opening up the refrigerator and flourishing. “They have drinks! And chocolate! The good stuff!” She held out something that said “Chocolate Orange” on it, with branding for _ Alita 2: Ashen Victor _.

“I have good stuff too,” Jasminka said, pulling out a bag of Rap Snacks. “Death Grips flavor!”

“The hell does Death Grips taste like?” Amanda said from the couch, which she was draped loosely across.

“Activated charcoal and ghost pepper,” Jasminka said. She took a bite of an ink-black chip and began crying immediately.

“...okay, I can’t argue with that.”

Cons unfolded her gun into the little robot friend. She pointed at the TV, and the robot friend jumped out of her hands and skated over to the it.

“And I shall get a nice, roaring fire going!” Ford said, striking a flint and steel at a fluffy pile of kindling made from what looked like drier lint. It caught quickly. “Ahh… feel the coziness. ...ah, ah, almost forgot!” He twisted the flue key. “And now we won’t smoke ourselves out. Just smell that hardwood go!” He began to waft the scent towards himself just as several drops of blood plipped from the chimney directly into the flame. He winced. “And it appears the chimney crown has been damaged.”

“I can handle that,” Diana said, kneeling before the fire. She held her wand by her ear and muttered “_ Fleidermausvisier. _ ” She closed her eyes and listened to the crackle of the fire, aiming her wand at a precise angle up into the flue. “And… _ Sosomme Tidiare. _” Green liquid condensed above the fire and crawled upwards, guided by the movements of her wand, or so I assume. After a few moments she opened her eyes and collapsed her wand against the stone of the fireplace. “There. We’re in the clear.”

“The convenience of witchcraft is truly astonishing,” Ford said admiringly.

“It has its perks,” Diana said, twirling her wand and returning it to its holster.

“That said, I’m still thinking of holding off on roasting marshmallows over this,” Ford said. “Just in case.”

“Of course.”

We settled in and made snacks, Lotte boiling some tea and Stan breaking the lock off the liquor cabinet. “Gather ‘round, kids,” he said, pouring out shots into little glasses at the kitchen table. “For a successful monster fight calls for drinks!”

“Can we actually do that?” I said, stepping up to the table. The other witches, sans Constanze, hiked up with a quickness. “Take a drink of real alcohol, that is?”

“Of course we can,” Stan said. “Why wouldn’t–I mean, also, it’s legal in the UK, right?” After a moment he added, “If anyone asks, I fed you first.”

“What did you feed us?” Sucy said.

“...Nachos,” Stan said.

“What kind of nachos?”

“Carne asada. With lime juice and jalapeno. They didn’t have any cilantro, and that one–” he pointed at Lotte– “kept saying ‘please keep it off mine because it tastes like grass’ every single time I mentioned food even though we _ all _ heard it the first time when I said I didn’t have any cilantro.”

“I like cilantro…” Lotte said.

“Sorry, you look like the kind of person who wouldn’t. Anyway, you wanna drink, right?” Stan said, holding out a glass to me.

“I dunno,” I said. “It sounds pretty… _ whiskey. _” I raised my eyebrows repeatedly to cue his raucous laughter.

He knocked back the drink without breaking eye contact. “For that,” he said, setting the glass lip-down on the table, “you get none. The rest of you…” For the others, including Ford, had taken their glasses, just as Stan took his own. “Salud!”

The crew raised their glasses in toast and knocked their sip back. Jasminka shivered pleasurably, Diana with practiced smoothness, Akko struggling not to spit hers back up into the cup, and Amanda not batting an eye. Lotte drank hers with precarious slowness.

Constanze’s little robot got the TV on. It hovered on the news for half a second before the robot switched to some kind of media player whatsit. The TV showed a menu with a lot of 80s action figure artwork and what Sour Cream called “chiptunes” playing in the background. Constanze gestured grandly to a list of movies.

“I could use a movie,” Amanda said. She’d reached the couch before I did, and refused to take up less room when I tried to sit down next to her. I wound up sitting on her legs, which she didn’t seem to mind at all. She smirked at me.

I felt pretty good.

“Hey, is that ‘Nightmare on Elm Street?’” Akko said as Cons scrolled through the movie list. “I’ve been meaning to see that!”

“Maybe not a scary movie tonight,” Jasminka said.

I’d seen it before at the Horror Club. It was pretty dang scary. And also there was that scene with Johnny Depp… “Yeah, not tonight,” I said.

Stan landed heavily in a single-seat chair with two bottles of beer, two different brands. He used one beer bottle’s cap to open the other before opening the first beer’s cap with the lip of the second. “You got anythin’ in the ‘bikini car crash’ genre?” Stan said, and took a drink from both beers at the same time.

“Or something that requires at least a modicum of thinking?” Ford said, seated on the sofa closest to Stan and sipping some black tea he’d put on.

Constanze settled on _ Total Recall _and hit play.

“I’ve never heard of this one,” Ford said, eying the TV suspiciously.

“It’s the thinking man’s bikini car crash movie,” Amanda said.

“A compromise I can live with!” Stan said.

I didn’t pay too much attention. I was less contemplative than I was earlier; really, I just wanted to go to sleep. Except I really didn’t want to go to sleep. But boy oh boy could I use a nap… so long as I didn’t dream. I had a bad feeling about what my dreams would spit at me tonight. Or, worse, if it was a vision dream, or a possession dream.

I wondered what my parents were up to. I fished out my phone and started texting.

* * *

Priyanka’s cell phone beeped near her head.

“Snrrk–hmm? I’m up,” Dr. Maheswaran said, sitting up at last. She had a blanket over her, which might be a good sign. She peeked under: clothes still on. She checked her head: pounding. What she needed was–

“Prairie oyster, m’am?” a helpful young woman of color said. She was sitting next to her on the couch Priyanka had fallen asleep on. Said woman of color was holding out a Collins glass with a slightly compressed egg yolk, Worchestire sauce, and sprinkle of cayenne pepper.

“Oh thank God,” Priyanka said, taking the cup, holding it to Heaven to ask God for forgiveness for not having drunk even more before the blackout, and throwing it all back in one shot, eagerly gulping down the protein-rich mess.

* * *

“Phrasing!” Lotte said, all the way over in Glastonbury.

Everyone laughed, for it was right after Arnold told his future self that once he heard the crunch, he would be there.

For a brief moment, Lotte knew relief from her condition.

* * *

She licked her lips and held out the empty glass. “Thank you kindly,” Priyanka said. “I should’ve thanked you first, that was… that was very much being-a-patient of me.”

“De nada,” Wangari said, smiling. “Besides, your fam’s given me a lot of fascinating news to cover today. Luna Nova’s poppin’ like kettle corn tonight!”

“Tonight–what time is it?” Priyanka felt for her watch, then for her phone, forgetting where she’d placed it even though it had woken her up. “I have a plane to ca–oh. Right. I don’t have a plane to catch.”

“Nobody does,” Wangari said, patting her back. “Your men are outside, doctor. You get to take a nice lil’ break from the married life!”

Wait. Where was she?

Right, she was in the student union. It was a wreck, candy bar wrappers and chip bags and discarded cups and bottles of soda littering the floor in piles where there had been less dancing and foot traffic. On another couch across the sea of floor, Annabel was cocooned in blankets and nested in pillows. The TV was on, and showing the news for some reason. Why would kids ever watch the news if they–wait.

“Hey…” Priyanka said. “What’s going on?”

Wangari aimed the remote at the TV and turned it up.

The newsanchor was soaked in dried blood, much of it from the still-wet, fly-rich ludodactylus hide he was wearing, but besides the heavy bags under his eyes and a few patched-up stabs, he seemed to be just fine. “–word that famed dragon economist and day trader Fafnir has finally defeated the undead entity that menaced London, following a pitched two-hour battle that saw the involvement of not just Fanfir, but the Danish kaiju known as Reptilicus, in the defeat of the monster. For those just now regaining power, here is footage of that battle.”

The news cut to footage shot from a helicopter. Downtown London was in picturesque flame, with two monsters standing against each other, both heavily damaged and worn down from (as the man had mentioned) a pitched two-hour battle. On one side of the street was a serpentine, pale-gray, deer-antlered dragon, helpfully labeled “Fafnir.” On the other was the undead thing that had attacked the airport, labeled “NecroDraco,” along with an asterisk that the name had been voted for online (and had narrowly avoided being called “Burny McDeadface”).

The two beasts sized each other up, then collided in a terrific grapple, ending with Fafnir throwing NecroDraco into the London Shard, the largest and most glass-filled building in Europe. The building crashed gruesomely onto the monster, who was helpless to resist the tons of wreckage crashing upon it. The massive clouds of dust had not settled before Fafnir stamped one mighty claw onto NecroDraco’s neck as it tried to crawl from the wreckage.

Audio from a microphone Fafnir was wearing (according to a pop-up information thing) played: “Ruhe in Frieden, Bruder. Mutter liebte dich am meisten.” He charged a ball of energy in his maw and spewed a column of lightning onto the undead monster; it howled one last time and fell still.

A floppy sock puppet of a dragon waddled from off-camera and pat Fafnir on the back with a heavily-bandaged wing. “Kom nu,” he said, also via a microphone he had on, “lad os gå med <<whippets>> og feste med løse kvinder.”

Fafnir forced a smile. “Noch einmal, für Andvari.”

The footage ended and the feed returned to the newsanchor, who was asleep at his desk. A lightly wounded stagehand crept onto the set and put a blanket over him. She whispered at the camera, “Live updates available online. God save the Queen.” Back to the creepy girl playing tic-tac-toe with the clown.

“Huh,” Priyanka said. “So things are turning out alright?”

“For a given value of alright,” Wangari said, with a dismissive hand gesture. “It’s raining blood in Glastonbury. Good thing the place was evacuated after they sent the entity back through the Tor. … Anyway, about your husbands.”

“They’re alright, right?” Priyanka said.

“...for a given value of alright,” Wangari said, smiling wryly. “See…”

* * *

Not a half hour ago, just around the time his daughter was in freefall over Glastonbury, a very drunk Doug stepped up to a stone-sober cyclops.

“You think you can take this, huh?” Doug said, unbuttoning his shirt. “I keep people alive for a living, guy. What… what the hell do you do?”

“Be a cyclops,” the blue, bearded cyclops said. “I do some writing on the side. Have you read _ In Lieu of Flowers _?”

“I’ve been–” Doug leaned to the side and emptied his stomach. A chorus of “eew!”s and cheers rang from the witches watching this all play out in the student union. “–I’ve been busy fucking my hot-ass wife and, and keeping… you know… watching security! Doing security!”

“I understand that,” the cyclops said. “Still, are you entirely sure you want to wrestle me? I’m wildly outside your weight class. I have some friends I could nominate to wrestle in my stead.”

Doug finished removing the clothes from his upper body. “No, sir. I’m going to be wrestling _ you. _”

“Okay. A fairy wrestle must have a conceit. What are you willing to bet?”

“Our rooms at this dumbass school for magic idiots!” Doug said. The gathered witch-audience booed and hissed and called him a heel.

The cyclops mused a while in thought. “Seeing as how I hate my roommate and desperately want my own digs, I accept your challenge. Just one last time, are you _ sure _ you want to–”

“Gimmie a ring,” Doug said, “like, a wrestling ring, and like… like a half hour to get sober… and it’s on.”

“Alright, then,” the cyclops said.

* * *

About thirty-three minutes and three seconds later, Priyanka stumbled out onto the Luna Nova lawn, where the fairy janitors had set up a wrestling ring. It was surrounded by all those students who were not in the student union, plus a brigade of fairies, all of them shouting at the ring or chattering among themselves. The cyclops was in one corner of the ring, and Doug the other, getting handed bottles of water by a tipsy-looking Greg.

Priyanka pushed through the crowd and ran to her husband (and pretend-husband). “Doug? Greg?! What’s going on here?” she shouted over the din.

“Hey, honey,” Greg said, compensating for his lean and going too far, nearly tipping over.

“Don’t call her ‘honey,’ bitch,” Doug half-said, half-mumbled.

“Doug!” Priyanka said. “We have… uh… goals! So don’t back-talk your brother-husband.” She pulled Greg into a hug.

Doug snarled and turned his gaze to the cyclops. “You’re goin’ down, One-Eyed Willy!”

Wangari climbed into the ring. She cast a quick spell: “_ Metamorphie Vestis _!” Her school uniform poofed out and was replaced by an expensive-looking flapper dress in shades of red, studded with dozens of pearls, a feather boa whose color matched her belt, and accessorized with a red ostrich-feather headband and even more drapings of pearl jewelry. Still no shoes, though she had stockings on. “Ladies! Guests! And fair folk!” she said into her microphone. “Are you ready to witness the ultimate battle between man and fae?”

“I object!” Priyanka said, climbing into the ring with some help from Greg. “My man is drunk, he can’t–”

“Can’t _ what _, Anka?” Doug said. “What is it I can’t do?”

Priyanka held her hand just above Doug’s head. She swiveled it at the direction of the cyclops. Her hand pointed below the cyclops’s ribs. She framed his shoulders with her hands, then turned, keeping them held in place, to show that the cyclops was two-and-a-half times as wide as Doug. “I know you’re tough,” she said, “and I love you for it, but… pick your battles, Doug, and not just because they’re–”

“Pardon, m’am!” the cyclops said. “We fulfilled our end of the deal, so your husband has to follow up with his. There’s no getting out of it. The contract is more binding than anything penned by mortal hand.”

Wangari covered her microphone. “He ain’t kidding. If he backs out, it gets real bad, real fast. How attached are you to your firstborn?”

“...damn it, Doug,” Priyanka said. She fell back to the post. “Don’t get killed, alright?”

“Wouldn’t dare,” Doug said, popping his neck like they did in the movies.

“In the black corner!” Wangari said, in an announcer’s voice, “Wearing the Nordstrom Classic Smartcare black work pants, the Beach City Battle Cat, Douglas Attica Maheswaran!”

Doug thumped his chest twice and held up a proud fist. Witches clapped and cheered; Wangari mimed his gesture.

“And in the blue corner! In the red store-brand slacks, store brand redacted for the purposes of dignity!” Wangari took a knee. “No less than the man, the myth, the dream, _ D. Oswald Heist _!”

The fairies in attendance popped so hard that if there had been a roof it’d be flying off. Heist tightened his bandana.

“I wanna see a good, clean fight!” Wangari said, returning to her feet. “No gouging, no strikes below the belt, no cold iron, no glasses-breaking! A man’s gotta see, goddamn.” She held up her free hand. “Three… two… one…” She hopped back. “Go get ‘em!”

Doug and Oswald approached the center of the ring, pacing around each other, looking for an opening, Doug feinting left and right to test Heist’s reflexes. Heist juked left, and Doug rushed forward, grabbing Oswald around the thighs. The apparent plan was to give him a German suplex, but Oswald’s feet were planted firm and his stance was wide. The cyclops simply fell forward, putting most of his weight on his knees and firmly into Doug’s midsection, forcing the air out of his lungs.

“Now would be a good time to tap out,” he said, patting Doug’s cheek.

“Screw you,” Doug rasped, wasting precious air. He went through his options. No strikes below the belt, but if he twisted just so, he’d put the cyclops off-balance and then he’d shake all those spots out of his vision and after that, it’d be elementary–

–and then he was awake again. He was on the mat, and he could breathe, and he didn’t hear no bell–

He heard the bell.

“The winner–and still cham-peen–” Wangari said, “–Dee! Oswald! Heist!”

He followed the sound of Wangari’s voice to see her holding up the cyclops’s right hand in victory. Heist looked content. The crowd was losing it even harder than before, hats and vests and underwear flying overhead and into the ring.

Priyanka knelt by him, lifting his head up. “Are you alright?” she said. She inspected his eyes, his hands. “No signs of cyanosis… do you have a headache? Are you dizzy?”

“I’m fine,” Doug said, miserable. “Other than having lost our room.”

“Just you wait,” Priyanka said, kissing his forehead. “Excuse me!” she shouted at Wangari. “Can I possibly wrestle for an addendum to the contract?”

“Eh, I’d allow it,” Heist said.

“Ooh, a stipulation!” Wangari said. “Things just got interesting! What are you going to put on the line, Good Doctor Universe-Maheswaran?”

The compound last name gave Doug a sick twinge of despair. Just gotta kick me while I’m down, huh? he thought.

“When were you planning on moving into our room, Mr. Heist?” Priyanka said.

Oswald scratched his beard. “Mm, not tonight, obviously. I’m not a jerk.”

“That’s just fine by me,” Priyanka said. “How about I wrestle for… the school having to put us up somewhere?”

“It’s cool!” Greg said, trying to climb into the ring and having a hell of a time with it, on account of being fairly drunk. “I’m rich! It’s not a problem!”

“Then,” Priyanka said, “I wish for the school to help us find a place where I can be both near my child and protected from future… monster events.”

“Hm. Alright,” Heist said. “I have the headmistress’s ear, I can do that. Plus, fairy oath, she can’t quite turn that down. Who will you be wrestling for this honor?”

“Wait,” Wangari said. “What?”

“Well, we’re obviously in different weight classes,” Heist said. “Thought I’d give her a chance to declare a more suitable opponent.”

“I choose _ this one, _” Priyanka said, pouncing on Wangari.

The cheering resumed.

* * *

_ 8-2: Bubble Bennies _

As the movie wound down and everybody present began to discuss if the events were real or a dream, I crept to one of the windows and peeked outside.

It was past eleven, and the rain of blood was just now starting to slacken. From the warmth creeping in through the window, it had not gotten any less hot. I shuddered and closed the blinds. “Any word back from Luna Nova, Diana?” I said.

“Why, yes,” Diana said, checking her phone. “They’ve informed your parents that we’re all fine, and the monster flare-ups from last night are all settled by now. The Witches Hospitalier should be by in the morning or very late evening for cleaning and reclamation.”

“Cool,” I said. “Guess we’re stuck here tonight, huh?”

“Don’t think of it as ‘being stuck!’” Stan said. “Think of it as ‘being full of opportunity!’ … For sleeping!”

Diana yawned. “I do believe I could use some sleep, myself.”

We huddled around the dining room table for a moment to call rooms from a map of the place. Diana and Akko claimed the Turbo Lovers’ Mono-Bed Action Nest, at Akko’s insistence and to a lot of “oooo!”-ing from Sucy and Amanda. Sucy declared that her and Lotte would be in the Devil Nest, sight unseen, purely on the strength of the name. Constanze (via texting) indicated she was going to sleep on the couch, along with Jasminka, who found an inflatable mattress in one of the closets and decided to join her. The Pine brothers were staying in Plain #1.

“Which leaves you and me,” Amanda said, smirking at me.

“You sure you don’t want your own room?” I said. “There’s a few more bedrooms, we could spread out more if we wanted.”

“Nah,” Amanda said. “I gotta keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t get dragged off again. Or decide to go supervillain with all those mega-spells you keep casting.”

I smiled back. “Alright. Guess I could use the company.”

“How ‘bout this one?” Amanda said, jabbing her finger on the floor plan. Tilted Towers Twin Adventure Bunk was available.

“Sure!” I said. “Bunk beds are cool!”

“You have one too? Got a lil’ brother back home?”

“No,” I said, “I–uh–I actually have a little sister. Who visited last year! She saw you guys at the Enchanted Parade, remember?”

“Huh!” Amanda said. She cocked her head, looking over my face. “Had glasses? Really could not believe what she was seeing?”

I nodded.

“Small world,” she said. “Anyway. I’m gonna check to make sure the room is safe. Don’t get kidnapped, alright?”

“Not planning on it!” I said, waving her off as she headed to the stairs.

“Me,” Stan said, “I’m gonna check all the vents. Because if I wake up smelling blood, I’m not gonna like it that much.” He headed off down the hall. That just left me and Ford out in the lounge.

Ford took a seat across from me. He placed a bubble pipe in his mouth and gave it a soft puff. He nodded, satisfied, then dug into his pockets and pulled out a moleskine journal and a grease pencil. I looked over the map again. The BnB wasn’t just the house. There was a garden in the back, and at least one door crossed out with a small “no” written next to it. By hand, I mean, not typed on the printout.

Ford was drawing in the notebook, judging by the movements of his shoulder. “Say, Stevonnie,” he said. “That is your name, right? I didn’t mishear it?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Would you consider yourself a man or a woman…?” he said. “I’d hate to make a guess.”

“Well,” I said, clasping my hands and hoping that I wasn’t going to walk into a very unpleasant situation, “I’m kind of… in-between. I go by ‘they’.”

Ford nodded. “Good to know. I’ve been out of the loop for a while, but it’s good to see that back-home is loosening up a little bit.” He squinted at his drawing. “I’ve been around the world once or twice and made acquaintance with some very unique people. Magic and the paranormal has always fascinated me, Stevonnie.”

“Oh, me too!” I said. “I’ve been reading fantasy since I was old enough to read.” That was true for Steven and Connie. “And I’ve seen plenty of strange stuff, too, you know, if the magic sword didn’t tip anything off.”

“You could say I’ve been tipped off for a minute,” Ford said. “Your mother is a very hard person to forget.”

The sentence hung in the air like the Whi… like a circling bomber. Yeah, let’s go with that.

“My mom?” I said.

“When I began my trip around the world,” Ford said, “I decided to go for the obviously strange before tackling the Fortean and obfuscated. … Do you know what the word ‘occult’ actually means?”

“Like, other than ‘magic stuff?’”

“It has come to mean ‘magic stuff,’” Ford said. He was quite invested in his drawing now, smudging with his thumb for shading (I guessed). “But before then, and even now, it meant ‘to hide by imposition of another object.’ Like how the sun is hidden by the moon during an eclipse. The occult is not merely magical, but both magical and hidden. Witches and the Crystal Gems were, superficially, not very hidden at all...”

Was I sweating…?

“...but the more I investigated, the more I found that even the most visible things of magick had their secrets.” May-jick. Ms. Finneran had used the same weird pronunciation earlier. “For instance. Your mother, Rose Quartz, she was quite personable, and loved to talk at length about herself, her fellow Gems, the things she’d seen and places she wanted to be. I found it fascinating that while her friend Amethyst obviously had an amethyst in her chest, and Pearl a pearl on her head, that Garnet had a ruby and a sapphire in her palms. I brought up the subject, and she congratulated me on my observation skills. That was when she taught me about fusions, that unique function of Gem physiology.

“When I asked her about the pink diamond in her stomach…”

He turned the notebook towards me.

I’d seen Rose Quartz’s face in art all the time. The paintings of her in the past, photographs of her and dad, old home videos, the painting that hangs in my home. She’s always smiling, or determined, or having a good time, or being overwhelmed with the beauty of life.

I had never actually seen her look so upset. So afraid.

I had to hand it to him, Ford could really draw.

“She made me promise to tell no one,” Ford said, laying the journal down. “I redacted what I’d written down then and there to set her mind at ease. I have, indeed, spoken of it to nobody, until tonight. It seemed like a promise I could break if I were to break it for her child. That’s who you are, right? You have the same gem in the same place. You have her sword and shield.”

“It’s… complicated,” I said. “But… yes.” Why lie now when he had me pinned in place like a butterfly?

Ford nodded. “I’m sorry if I’ve brought up painful memories. I can stop, if you’d like.”

“You said… you said this is a pink diamond?” I stood up, pushing the chair out behind me. I framed my gem between my hands. “You’re sure about that?”

“One hundred percent,” Ford said, grimly. “The significance is an ominous one, I presume.”

“Very,” I said. I wiped sweat from my brow. But… how could she have…

“I say ‘presume,’ but Rose was very forthcoming about the Diamonds. I have my personal theories, of course, but again, I have to ask if you’re comfortable with me talking about it.”

My head was full of seltzer. Only one question bubbled to the top. “Does this mean I have to polish it?”

“It does,” he said. “Every six months, I would suggest.”

I giggled, feeling less real than when I’d touched the face of the universe.

Ford took my hand, grounding me again. “Stevonnie, the Gems are nice people, at least in my experience, but they have a very cagey, very guarded relationship with the truth.”

You’re telling _ me. _

“Witches are much the same way. They have a pronounced understanding of higher-dimensional physics and mathematics, but their culture and history are heavily occulted, kept from the eyes of people who would judge them too harshly by the actions of their founders and forefathers. You won’t get straight answers from them, either. Stevonnie, if ever you need an objective, outside perspective… I’ll be here. For the duration.” He puffed on his pipe, bubbles floating lazily into the air.

I nodded. “Alright. Good to know.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry to put so much on your head after a night where you already had so much to digest. But I couldn’t let it wait for too long.” He closed his journal and drummed his fingers on it. “Too many times I’ve let important things fall by the wayside…”

“I appreciate it,” I said, and even sorta meant it. “Thank you, Mr. Ford.”

“Any time, Stevonnie.”

I indicated the pipe. “Trying to quit?”

“You could say that,” Ford said.

“He’s just doing it to look cool!” Stan shouted from down the hall.

“It’s–I don’t need a pipe to look cool!” Ford shouted back.

“Good to know! Because you look like a huge nerd when you smoke that bubble pipe!”

“I–I do not!”

“The bigger question is, what DO you need to do to look cool? ‘Cause you’re a twenty-four hour PARTY NERD!”

“Why, I oughta…” Ford said, mock-shaking his fist at the hallway.

Man… having a sibling looks so cool.

* * *

Tilted Towers Twin Adventure Bunk was an unlicensed Fortnite-themed kids’ room. At least, I’m pretty sure a random Albion bed-and-breakfast didn’t pay for the bedroom theming rights, but then, the Fortnite people probably didn’t care. The walls were intermittently covered with Fortnite character and logo wall-sticker thingeys, there was a TV with a Fortnite-themed Playstation attached and two controllers, one stock, one cheap. I looked in the room but didn’t see Amanda; she couldn’t have been hiding anywhere seeing as how it was just large enough for a couple of kids (like me!) to lie down on the carpet and play video games long into the night, plus dressers, a modest bookshelf, and a closet that I checked for a tar statue.

After a moment she didn’t descend from the top bunk (where she’d have to be invisible and suspending herself on the handlebars). I sat on the bottom bunk and tested the TV. Regular TV hadn’t come back, and it was still playing the scary girl-and-clown image; I didn’t like girl staring directly at me, or the worried frown on the clown doll’s felt face. I turned on the Playstation and the screen filled with a very non-kid-friendly anime-girl theme.

Whoever was here last had uninstalled Fortnite and spent a lot of money buying a lot of anime-looking games with icons that were all fixated on someone’s chest.

Amanda entered the door with a handful of treats held to her chest. “Yo!” she said. “Things were looking pretty solid, so I hit the bathroom real quick and got us some snacks. You know, so we can play all those games I just bought. Classed this Playstation up real nice.” She dropped her armload of candy bars and strangely-named potato chips next to me, then sat on my lap. I squeaked and clenched my legs tight. “What,” Amanda said, glimpsing over her shoulder, looking like a cat that had just stepped in the cake on purpose. “Am I that heavy?”

“N-no…” I said.

“Then chillax, friend. We got all night.”

“Please don’t,” I gasped.

She rolled her eyes. “A’ight, don’t wanna impose or nothin’,” she said, and scooted to the left. I unclenched my legs. “Seriously, though. Wanna fire up one of these titty games, or…?”

“I think I’m okay for games,” I said, looking over to the bookcase. “Maybe I just wanna put on a movie, some white noise or something. You know, to help sleep.”

“Sounds cool,” Amanda said, hopping off the bed and inspecting the bookstand. She knelt, balancing on her toes. “Lessee... you want kids’ movie, kids’ movie with dogs, or kids’ movie with princesses? Jesus, not even a superhero movie here, you’d think this would be the room for it. It’s not even one of the hotter princesses.”

“...who would, uh…” I said. “Who would you consider one of the hotter princesses?”

“Hm,” Amanda said, rocking back and forth. “The hot ones. Well, there’s the one with the big red hair…” She gestured to the sides of her head, miming big, flowing, curly hair. “She shoots things, that’s pretty cool.”

I was acutely aware of the weight and density of my hair.

“You like the fighting types, huh?” I said.

“Yeah,” Amanda said. “No time for those ones that like to talk shit out or throw parties. If you can’t kick some ass, I ain’t interested.” She stuck her tongue out. “How ‘bout you? What’s your princess type?”

“...uh…” Well. Let’s load this up and fire it. “She’s not a princess, I guess, but that one about the boy in the jungle, and at the end he sees that girl and she’s singing about being a good wife, and…”

Really? Connie said at the back of my head.

“Oh, you like you some really femmy femmes, eh?” Amanda said, no longer kneeling. She was seated, stretching out. She propped herself up, her back arched just a little bit, enough to pull her uniform a little bit more taut against her chest.

I looked her up and down. She was lean, her legs both lean and hard, trained for running. I spoke again: “And, you know that one with the llama? When they’re a guy–”

“Heheh, one of the guy princesses, huh?” Amanda said, her smirk returning in force. “You like him a lot, eh?”

“Yeah!” I said. “He’s funny, and he’s cool, but he’s got heart, and he really finds himself without losing all the things that make him special.”

“Femmy femmes, and rough-n-tumble guys,” Amanda said. “Not bad, not bad. You know, I can’t ever see myself being, like, a princess? The gentle demure nice-girl thing, that ain’t me. But I likes me a rapscallion. I like to think... “ She equipped her wand. “...I can pull off the look myself.”

She cast a spell, and her school uniform turned into a handsome tuxedo. Her hair was slicked back. There were subtle touches–her jaw seemed a little more sharp, her shoulders wider, her hips slimmer. Her expression was unchanged. She was daring me. Daring me to what? Daring–

Connie had one thought on her mind.

Steven had a couple more, but they were quite copacetic with Connie’s single thought.

My heart was pounding. I wasn’t feeling the tug of disharmony, just the thrill of… the thrill of what? What was I feeling?

The same feeling when you first saw Connie in the parade. When you saw Steven in a new light after slaying the monster with the bridge.

I crossed my legs, leaning forward. “You really do pull it off,” I said, mostly in a gasp.

“Of course I do,” Amanda said. “I’m hot.” She hopped to her feet. “Anyway. It’s time to dress down for sleep.” She(?) began to unbutton her shirt.

I held out as she threw her jacket aside. I kept it in line when she whipped her belt aside and unbuttoned her pants, sliding them down her hips, revealing expensive-looking bought-one-at-a-time briefs. (My head was a balloon on a tether at this point.) But when they turned away from me and pulled off their shirt, I could survive only to the first peek of the binder at their shoulder and I turned away, panting.

The rising song of a spell told me when I could look. Amanda was down to a sports bra and pair of boxers. It was intense, yes, but not as intense as it had been. She looked satisfied. “Too much Adam for your eyes, eh?”

“Adam?” I said, a half-second before realizing.

She nodded when she saw the realization dawn. “I don’t think I’ve told anyone my masc name yet. They see me, they lust for me, they think, man, I want him to get all up in me, or maybe some of the feistier ones want in _ me. _” She licked her lips. “Feeling all those desperate eyes… man, it’s better than drugs.”

I thought back to Kevin, and how small he’d made me feel my first night out. “You… like that feeling?”

Amanda’s expression softened. “Well. It’s not the same for everybody. You’ve had some real bad luck there, huh?”

“I… yeah. There was this one night, this real jerk of a guy, he just…”

“Shh, sh-sh-sh-sh,” Amanda said, sitting next to me. “You don’t have to think about him any more tonight. Guys like that, they’re all the same. They don’t want _ you, _ they want your nooks and crannies. They don’t care who you _ are _, they just want to add the red-headed ten to their trophy list. Like you’re a twelve-point buck.”

“...that sounds like Kevin, yeah,” I said.

“Oh, and he’s named _ Kevin _. Vying with Christian for the title of ‘most cursed name of all cursed names.’” She moaned. “Yeah. That’s definitely the best part of going masc. … Gah, what the hell kind of thing to say is that?” She flopped back onto the bunkbed. “That’s like saying, ‘I really like wearing the bulletproof vest, it really cuts down on getting shot in the chest.’ The solution isn’t putting on a vest, the solution is stopping people from shooting.” She pointed at me. “No word of that sentence leaves this room or they won’t let me back in Texas.”

I stared at her finger.

“I don’t even know if I’m being sarcastic or not,” Amanda said.

“Secret stays with me,” I said, crossing my heart.

“Thanks, Fluffy.” She gestured to her head. “On account of the hair, you see.”

I nodded.

“I think I grabbed an Aero bar. Can you hand it to me? Unless it’s a mint Aero. Hate those.”

* * *

We ate snacks and watched the kids’ movie with dogs. Amanda took the bottom bunk, I took the top, which was maybe not the best idea since it wasn’t any larger than my bed at Luna Nova, but it was higher off the ground, which was nice.

Amanda wound up falling asleep before we even got to the trial of the dogs. When she stopped making smart-alec quips I rolled over and bundled up. I pulled the sheets over my head and started trying to stop thinking of anything.

So of course I started thinking about everything.

After a while, I began to narrow it down: no magic stuff. No monsters. No space stuff. No ghost stuff. No White Cyclosa. No blood rain. Just pretend that’s normal rain you’re hearing. Man, it really does not want to stop… no, stop thinking now. No thinking about precipitation.

After yet another while I decided that thinking about what not to think wasn’t helping me not-think about all that stuff. So I decided to think about what I _ wanted _ to think about.

Like Connie.

Connie’s here.

No matter who Rose Quartz might be, what she might have done in the past, what she might have hidden even from the other Gems, Connie Maheswaran was real, was the same as always.

And Connie, in turn, believed in Steven. It wasn’t Rose or Pink who had saved her from the boulder, who had encouraged her to learn the art of the sword, who had protected her while she stood up to her parents; it was Steven. It wasn’t the gem in his stomach she had saved a dozen times, and who had saved her a dozen times in return; it was Steven. It wasn’t a millennia-old tyrant turned rebel who she loved deeply and unreservedly; it was Steven.

Connie’s love for Steven had made him more than the shade of his mother. And Steven’s love for Connie had made her more than a shy bookworm whose presence anywhere was inherently transient.

I was as sure of their love for each other as I was of my existence, for they were the same thing.

I relaxed my head. I felt my consciousness not split but divide. It was a feeling like a sudden nap that turns into a vivid dream; I was floating away, listening to my component selves speak.

“So,” Connie said, through my lips, “that’s how it feels to learn a new superpower in a life-or-death situation, huh.”

“Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Steven said.

“Well... I could’ve done without the mortal peril.”

Steven did an accent I couldn’t place, quoting something that he hadn’t read, but Connie had: “‘Welcome to the only game in town.’”

Then I laughed softly, and the shared joy brought me back together like a warm hug. “I love you,” I said in a voice which was Love itself.

My eyes fluttered closed, and after a while, I fell asleep.

_ You died, Stevonnie. _

* * *

After hours of pitched battle, the bell rang at last, ending Wangari’s physical suffering and signalling the beginning of the emotional suffering.

Priyanka stood up, dusting off her hands theatrically. “And that,” she shouted to the cheering crowd, “is why you don’t fuck with a surgeon.”

Wangari unwound from the elaborate lock Priyanka had subjected her to and flopped onto the canvas. Her entire body tingled unpleasantly like her funny bone had been stuck in an electrical socket.

Props to the good doctor, she hadn’t mentioned the Pehlwani wrestling lessons on Facebook. Or, for that matter, the Muay Thai kickboxing lessons. She had been grounded and pounded by an expert.

* * *

“...phrasing…” Lotte muttered in her sleep.

* * *

“Our winner,” Oswald proclaimed over the cheering, raucous crowd with the aid of Wangari’s microphone, “the Deadly Doctor, Prescriber of Pain, Priyanka Maheswaran.”. She bowed a couple times and used the few remaining buttons on her blouse to close it up again.

Joanna screamed and rushed the ring. “Ma’am!” she said, wand out, “Please sit still, this may hurt!”

It did, but those bones weren’t gonna straighten on their own… immediately, anyway. Wangari lay down and listened to Priyanka’s husbands climb up and chat with her. Her ears were still ringing from eating the turnbuckle, so she could neither listen closely nor was she in the mood to.

“You know,” Wangari said, “the worst part of all this isn’t the pain. It isn’t even seeing my catch wrestling and boxing lose against a superior martial artist’s skills. Hell, that’s a freeing sensation, in a way–ow! Ease up on the long muscles!”

“Sorry,” Joanna said, patting Wangari’s lower back. The plunging backline had been ripped even further down in the battle.

“...anyway. It wasn’t even all those totally unnecessary pins she did just to show me off to the crowd, or making me eat the turnbuckle, or that part where she threw me to the crowd, and then they threw me back. It was…” She took a deep breath. “You know the picture you took?”

Joanna nodded, sniffling.

“The Knightfall shot. Oh, Shudde M’ell, I saw your flash go off, and before that concussion, I knew then and there–” She seized Joanna’s collar, to her blushing consternation–”for the sake of the art of journalism, and for the sweet science of fisticuffsmanship, and for the sake of our circulation numbers, that photo has to be the front-page picture of the next school newspaper. Do you understand me?”

“It is the bravest of women,” Joanna said, sniffling, “who transmutes the moment in which she is strongly owned into a thing of art.” She wiped her tears away. “Also, this is the nerve-pain-and-damage spell. Enjoy.”

“You know I do, ba–aaaaaaaaaaaabe,” Wangari moaned, shivering as relief rippled up her system. When her senses returned, she continued. “And you know what’s even worse?”

“What, ma’am?”

“We need a story to go with that title shot.” She jumped to her feet. “Can you de-metamorphie me? I threw my wand out of the ring earlier because–” Joanna struggled to pull Wangari’s wand from inside her vest. She paused a moment, as if expecting someone to say something, then sighed and finished tugging it free and returning it to the reporter’s hand. “Thanks, Jo-Jo. You’re a rose among thorns.”

Joanna blushed. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Wangari dismissed her Vestis spell, spun on her heel, and marched to the Universe-Maheswarans, who were having a discussion with Heist. “Excuse me!” she said. “May I have my microphone back?”

“Oh, sure, sorry about that,” Heist said, returning her mic.

“And, ma’am,” Wangari said, “if it wouldn’t be too much trouble at all, may I interview you sometime in the near future? Something to commemorate the woman who defeated me in the Squared Circle.”

Priyanka nodded. “Why, yes. That sounds fine.”

“You heard it, folks!” Wangari said into her mic, pointing her wand out at the students and fairies. “Next issue of Luna Nova News, an exclusive report on all the exciting New Kid information you crave! Their spectacular origins! Their dangerous parents! Maybe even news about what they were up to tonight seeing as how they’re not present for some reason! All the must-have news you crave!”

Sarah Bernhardt was positioned right at the edge of the ring, staring directly at her, expressionless.

“Wow, you’re creepy,” Wangari said. Into the microphone.

Clap, clap, clap clap clap! “Wow-you’re-cree-py!” chanted the crowd.

Sarah’s eyes narrowed.

* * *

_ 8-X: Bubble Banes _

At one o’clock in the morning in Glastonbury, the rain began to finally taper off.

In room 101, Plain #1, Ford and Stanley slept. Stan snored, and he would always snore, no matter how many Breathe-Dee-Sently strips he applied. Ford did not snore, though he did sleep only after making the Elder Sign, and his dreams were seldom pleasant. Tonight was no exception. Memories made for the worst dreams, and this one was made all the more bitter through the passage of years.

In room 203, the Turbo Lovers, Akko slept and Diana waited. Diana was the little spoon, Akko the big. Diana had taken a whole Xanax, and at Akko’s request (and her abundant supply, bless her family’s good name), spared her a half-dose. Akko had fallen asleep mid-talk about her favorite season of Precure, and Diana was left awake in her arms, staring at the wall. In the dark, the pearly-pink wallpaper was bleached almost white, the overlapping pattern of hearts and diamonds like scales. She dreamed movement among them, like snakes. Akko was soft as a pile of jelly and just as unmoving. But she was warm, and soft, and her arm was protectively curled around her waist. Thus, it was a unilateral improvement over sleeping alone.

In room 208, Devil Nest, Lotte was fast asleep, curled up around her phone, whose charge was dropping precipitously as she left it on a music app. She was worried, as Annabel hadn’t texted back after typing about taking the ‘margarita tower challenge’. She would be fine, Lotte had faith in her ability to drink, but she hated to wait, and she desperately needed someone to talk to–her new best friend, slash favorite author, slash maybe more (oh please let it be maybe-more). She’d fallen asleep waiting. Sucy, well, she was not asleep. Let’s leave it at that, else we start prying.

Downstairs in the guest lounge, Constanze and Jasminka slept. Constanze was sprawled on the couch, kicking in her dreams like a dog. She flopped, she rolled like a pillbug. Beds never worked for her. The soft wall of a couch was better for her, more compatible with her dreaming athletics. Jasminka was cozy on the air mattress, a little cool, maybe, but she wouldn’t care asleep. She dreamed of handsome boys getting their fill of pies.

In Tilted Towers, Amanda and Stevonnie slept. Amanda had no dreams, none she would remember, anyway. She wasn’t even overly concerned with the day’s events; it was just some other cosmic freakout that she anticipated seeing more of in the future. Just another one of life’s hurdles. Stevonnie, well, they’re a special case.

Steven dreamed that Sonic the Hedgehog needed his help to save Mario, because he couldn’t handle the water levels. So Steven hopped in a bubble and sped along to save the plumber, braving jellyfish and googly-eyed regular fish.

Connie dreamed _ that _dream, the one where she was the heroine rendered helpless to stop the handsome villain from doing what he pleased to the handsome but inept hero. She was just lucid enough a dreamer, and anxious enough, to wonder why Steven was the villain this time, and Amanda in her Adam mode, the hero.

Stevonnie… well.

* * *

[It was a beautiful day at school](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xq4TZD-fi8), but I couldn’t waste any time, I woke up late and had to book it to get to my first class, toast in mouth ‘cause that’s just how you do it, you know? I opened the door on my homeroom and saw that the relocation to the indoor greenhouse had gone just fine. The room was full of little cherry blossom trees and rosebushes. I took my seat between one student and another and stretched so hard I could feel my entire back pop.

The teacher stepped into the room. Dr. Maheswaran adjusted her glasses and said, “Class, I’m sorry to announce that finals are starting in fifteen minutes. Ms. Connie Maheswaran, it’s good to see you at last.”

I bit straight through the toast, which landed on my desk with a crisp clap.

I realized, too late, that I had forgotten to go to every single Tuesday-Thursday class this semester. What even was homeroom?! I needed to cram. I felt around for my backpack, but I’d forgotten it at the waterfall last night. Did I even get my Tuesday-Thursday textbooks?!

Maybe I could call for help. Right! Connie lived by the waterfall! Or–

Wait.

I looked to my left. “One student” was suddenly Diana. She was staring ahead, not even at the teacher, her eyes-half lidded and dull. She gently sawed her fingernails into the base of her thumb, drawing a raw red line across it. _ Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. _ I looked to the right and saw Jeff, that kid whose arm I broke, sobbing as he held his stomach with his one working hand. This was to be expected. Of course he was holding his stomach. That much blood seeping around his arm, it had to be bad.

“Connie,” Dr. Maheswaran said. “I need you to pay attention. Answer me this question: what story did we read for class this week?”

“Iugno,” I said, through a mouthful of dry toast.

She looked down at her desk and checked off something on a piece of paper. “You fail the class.”

I swallowed the toast, unchewed and dry.

“Diana, please begin the reading of this week’s story.”

Diana stood up, slowly, as if she were new to the idea of standing. She spoke, low, quiet, droning: “‘Hypnos.’ Short story, H.P. Lovecraft. Its creation was chronicled in his commonplace book. Opens with a motto from Baudelaire: ‘Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.’” She looked at me. One of her eyes sagged out under her eyelid, like it was full of sand.

_ Call the Gems. You’re in danger. Call the Gems. _

I should call the Gems.

The Gems!

My homeroom was gone. I was in the Tilted Towers room. I was asleep in the top bunk. There was a pink glow emanating from that top bunk. Of course. Of course.

Not here, I thought. Gotta be home. Gotta be home to speak with the Gems. I need to tell them everything that happened (except what I don’t want them to know because I have secrets to keep that they can never know). Home. Home, where you can lie down and watch TV and eat Chaaaaps Brand Potato-Flavored Snack Pieces and drink Mr Pibb and forget that the entire rest of the world exists because you’re safe.

I closed my eyes and I willed myself to dream about home.

I opened my eyes. I was back home, downstairs in the living room, lying on the air mattress. Constanze was asleep on the couch behind me. Someone had brought the TV down to the bottom floor; the game-over screen for an SNES game shone on us as we slept. Steven was in the game-over screen, floating in a force bubble underwater, his eyes X-ed out. I was lying next to Jasminka.

She looked at me, her smile unchanging. “Hi, Stevonnie.” She held out a Cookie Cat with a single, perfect cartoon bite taken out of it. “Cookie Cat? Memory flavor.”

I didn’t have the time to stop and eat with Jasminka, so I did. I took the Cookie Cat and bit into it. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. For a moment, just a moment, I could be in the last normal day of my life, the day before Cookie Cat had been discontinued and everything that could possibly change did, one frame at a time until nothing remained of my old life but me.

Jasminka rolled over, watching me eat. “Do you want another?” she said.

“Yes, please,” I said, licking cakey crumbs from my fingers.

I went to the dining room table. It was raining blood outside, but I could pretend it was just rain so long as Jasminka was slaving over the oven. She brought out a fresh pan of Cookie Cats, setting them on the table. The Cookie Cats were copiously steaming, smelling like copper and iron. I plucked an ice-cold Cookie Cat from the pan and devoured it in short order. Jasminka sat next to me and watched me scarf them down one at a time, savoring every bite. 

Only in dreams, now, I thought.

Jasminka stood and watched me eat the entire time, wearing the same unchanging expression. “You’re loving those Cookie Cats,” she said.

“Yes, I am,” I said, after finishing off my current ice cream sandwich. “It’s so good. Thank you so much.”

“Oh, think nothing of it.” She pat my belly. “Good boys gotta eat up,” she said, pressing her fingers into my stomach. “You’re so skinny, Steven. You could fill out a little.”

“I’m not Steven,” I said. “I mean, I am, but…”

“Shhh,” Jasminka said, sitting in my lap side-saddle. I squealed and tried to clench my legs, but her own were weighty not just with fat but thick muscle. She refused to move. She was _ touching _me. She moved her hand from my stomach to my gem. “Let me feel the cut. It’s so sharp. If I push…” She did. I could feel my gem cut her palm. She gasped, delightedly, and looked at her wounded hand. “What a beautiful cut. Diamond cuts diamond.” She touched my face, smearing blood onto my cheeks.

“Stop,” I said, writhing, trying to force the chair out from under me, or at least tip her over.

“Why would I ever stop?” Jasminka said, untying her pigtails. “You don’t want me to stop. You just _ think _ you want me to stop.” She shook her hair out into thick, bright-pink curls, yards and yards and yards of them. I crawled away from her, for I was suddenly on the floor. She scuttled after me like a spider on all fours, her capelike flair of pink curls swishing behind her. She leapt, and she was on me, her weight crushing my chest. She ran her hands through her own hair; her gem sparkled in the upside-down-star-cutout on her white dress.

I couldn’t even try to escape her. She was too strong, too heavy, and my muscles refused to respond to my commands. I was limp as a dead fish. Jasminka kneaded my stomach, fondling my gem with her thumbs. I squirmed, helpless, whimpering.

“Oh, Steven,” Jasminquartz purred. “Don’t be so disappointing. You make me sad I gave birth to you.”

“You’re not…” I said. “You’re not Rose Quartz.”

“Of course I am,” she said, looming over me until her face, framed by my mother’s hair, filled my vision. “Nothing can truly die which is loved.” She forced her mouth on mine, and that, yes, that was the absolute worst.

I screamed, I found my strength at last and pulled away from her, scrambling backwards to keep her in my sight so she wouldn’t disappear. I bumped into a statue of Connie made from pink Grumble Puff goo. Against all reason I stopped and stared, watching the Connie statue strain against the confines of the pink goo, Connie’s muffled screams sounding from inside.

_ Not a statue. _

I could move again, and saving Connie just slid past my consciousness like a skipping stone. I juked to the left and hit a Steven puff-statue with a YIELD sign for a face. No movement. Yet. I got to my feet and spun around. Greg, Priyanka, Doug, Akko, Diana statues surrounded me, without so much as an inch between their sticky limbs. “Please,” I said. “Don’t do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want–” There was a rush, a sound of wind sliced by motion, and a spiked limb impaled me through the chest.

More than anything else, it felt like a compression, the spike crowding out my lungs. I couldn’t even feel the blood and light pouring out onto the floor.

The limb lifted me up, up, and turned me around. The Rosy Cyclosa stared at me, its/her mass a pink so bright and burning it was like staring at the sun. Her white dress billowed in a great wind, like a sheet on a wire, like a beckoning hand.

“_ I love you, _” she said. There was an eye in her mouth.

Garnet was standing on the warp behind her, looking on. I couldn't breathe, but I mouthed a plea for help.

Garnet spoke coldly. "I’m sorry, Rose Quartz. It’s all gone wrong."

She tilted her mirrored glasses, and I saw Pink Diamond's face staring back at me in the reflection.

"But you’ll be with us soon."

Spidery, dagger-fingered limbs groped my stomach. They slipped under my gem and yanked it free, and the only thing louder than the tearing of my flesh or the scream trapped in my throat was my heart pounding–

* * *

I woke up gasping for breath, the slippery texture of my bubble under my toes and crown, my entire body arching from the effort. The air was stale, sour with sweat. There was a steady pounding from somewhere, echoing through my head. Muffled voices. I could barely take in the outside world through the–

Oh, crap, the bubble! I willed it leave, and with a descending note and a soft pop the stale air refreshed.

And I fell two feet into Amanda’s arms. Not too gently, I forced the air out of her, but it was less jarring a landing than I was afraid of.

“Jesus_ Christ _ ,” Amanda said, breathless, “when you have a bad dream, you have it _ real _ bad.”

I took deep, needy breaths and coughed into my elbow, trying to shake the feeling of pressure out of my chest. I looked up and saw that my bubble had not only punched a hole in the mattress, the spikes–oh, damn it, it was the mace ball–had pried open the metal framework of the bunk and shredded the sheets and pillow. There were holes punched in the ceiling plaster. I felt a hot flush of shame. So this is the Diamond equivalent of wetting the bed.

“Relax, man,” she said. “You’re cool. You’re safe. Hell, it stopped raining, so that’s cool, too.” She looked over. “And you didn’t bust up the TV or the Playstation, so that’s less we have to shoot magic at.”

She lay me down on the bed and scooted back on her knees. I felt gritty stuffing under my back from where I’d shredded the top bed. I took deep breaths and listened to the faint hum of central air. In the thin glow of a nightlight the Fortnite decorations were shadows with no casters. I thought of…

Thoughts I had pushed to a corner of my mind took center stage, mingling with the dream. It remained crystal clear, all of it, defying the fading of a normal dream. Was it normal? Was it just bad enough to remain fresh like a bruise? Or…

“Amanda?” I said.

“Yeah, Fluffy?”

“[Can you keep a secret?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJl22f1hH-0)”

“You picked the right girl to ask, ‘cause I can’t even tell you how many secrets I’m keeping.” She lay next to me. “You need something to confess?”

I nodded, and the words burst out unbidden: “The White Cyclosa killed me.”

Amanda took a moment to process that.

“So… you’re a zombie?”

“No. I just…” Okay. Time to lie. “When I die, I turn into, into copies of my little sister and my adopted brother. Greg’s kid, I mean. I… I don’t know if they’d die if they got killed. It hasn’t happened yet. God, it was my first time actually dying today.”

I tried to think of what it felt like. Against every instinct, against everything I had tried to feel all day, I tried to remember the experience of dying. I remembered the lead-up, but the gap between being a fusion and being Steven and Connie was wider than normal.

Better to forget. Better to let that fall away.

Amanda sighed. “Boy oh boy, do I have questions… and I don’t wanna ask them. But yeah. I’d be having nightmares too.”

She believed me.

Oh thank the stars she believed me.

“Yeah. Secret’s safe with me, Fluffy.” She mimed zipping her lips. “Help me clean this up and I won’t even mention the two-kids thing. Which is weird. Like, even for me.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “You’ll have to teach me the spell.”

“No prob. It’s easy.”

It was my turn to be quiet.

“Hey,” Amanda said. “If you have anything else to say, say it. I won’t tell nobody, no way, no how.”

“I…” My breath hitched in my chest. “I don’t know if I want to say anything else. Just saying that I… that I died, that was so much more than I ever thought I’d tell someone. I have so much I have to keep secret, I can’t… if I tell you anything more…”

Like that my mom was a space monster and my dreams can be invaded with prophecy and psychic missives.

“Then don’t.” Amanda kissed my forehead. “Some secrets are just things that you keep.”

My heart skipped a beat. In a good way. A very good way.

“Come on,” she said, patting my hair. “Lemme show you how to fix it.”


	9. The Second You Finish Cleaning One Thing, Something Else Gets Dirty

The best moments of sleep may not even be sleep itself, but those minutes after a deep, dark, rejuvenating sleep. Those precious minutes spent lying in a comfortable bed, the light tickling the eyelids, where dreams are as vivid as memories.

Priyanka Maheswaran had the divine fortune of being trapped in this middle state for almost an hour after, technically speaking, she had woken up. She had her half-remembered dreams to keep her company, her exaggerated memories of her interview with, what was her name, Wangari?, and the joyous act of commiserating with her husband over what had been, all in all, a very up-and-down few days.

When at last she opened her eyes, the thin beams of light between the slats of Venetian blinds jabbed her pupils and finally lit the fuse on her hangover.

She curled into a ball, hand over her eyes, shoulders shrugged over her ears. “Oh, God,” she croaked, “please let there be water somewhere…”

She fumbled with one hand and found, blessedly, a pitcher of water, and a little plastic cup. She shook the cup; pills rattled in its depths. Without looking she popped the contents into her mouth and chugged water straight from the pitcher until she felt less like a mummy.

Phone. Check your phone, Priyanka.

No, idiot brain, because then I’ll have to look at a lit screen.

She peeked between her fingers and saw that her phone was not only plugged in, but had a note attached to it:

“Phone screen is on low–

Getting breakfast

XOXO Doug”

“Oh, Doug,” Priyanka said, “you’re too good to me.” She peeled the post-it from her phone and saw her messages. One of them was from her daughter.

(Well, Stevonnie’s entry in her phone. But Stevonnie was half her-daughter, and so was her daughter in full.)

She opened it, eyes tripping down a lengthy text she couldn’t focus on and settling on a wide-angle selfie. Stevonnie was in the right corner, and a bunch of her – their, pardon – a bunch of their new witch friends filled out the photo to their left. And an old man…? Twin old men, at that. What in the hell…?

She squinted at the words and willed them into turning coherent.

She saw the words “rain of blood” and pieced together, as the writer said, disparate gulfs of knowledge into a sudden, clear, awful image.

“Oh, son of a _motherfucker_,” she said, and bolted for her suitcase.

* * *

The blood disappeared at some point in the night. I didn’t know why, and at the time I didn’t really care, because that was one less thing we had to clean up.

Well, a whole lot less thing we had to clean up, because Diana – well, here’s how she put it:

After Jasminka and Ford made us all breakfast, Diana stood at the head of the dining room table and said, “We should repair the damage to Glastonbury. With all our skills together, we could have it all done by the afternoon.”

Amanda groaned out loud, but she was the dissenting vote. Now that I had something like sleep and a full belly, I could now be concerned with all that public and private property I’d damaged or destroyed in fighting the White Cyclosa. When you’re in the heat of the moment it’s hard to remember how much a light pole costs the taxpayers to repair, you just think, “I bet I could stab the monster with that and it’d hurt a lot.” But as magically-empowered individuals, it’s our civic duty in turn to at least clean up after ourselves.

I told Amanda as much, but she was pretty tuned out as we took our places on the street. Me and the rest of the witches (I’m a witch! I can do magic! Er, more magic than before!) were gathered in a loose circle in the street in front of Thrillgrims, Diana at the northern-most point and Akko at the other pole. The sun was just above the horizon, the sky was blue and lightly streaked with cotton-white clouds, and the wind was bitterly cold but in an invigorating way, like what a viking would feel at his back right before doing viking stuff.

“Alright!” Diana said. “There are three primary components to this cleanup. There is macro-repair, the repair of houses and structures; there is mechanical repair, of vehicles and power structures; and there is minor repair, in particular of all the local materials that the White Cyclosa used in constructing its decoys.” She nudged a fallen license plate with her shoe. “Stevonnie, you mentioned that you had exceptionally strong repair magic?”

“I do!” I said, saluting like a scout. “Me and Amanda did some repair work last night! I, uh, I turned a damaged pillow into a pile of stuffing, two piles of thread, and some ink. That’s from too much repair magic, right?”

“Maybe a little,” Amanda said.

“Hm,” Diana said, touching her chin. “I have a plan for this. You and Akko are with me. Constanze, I imagine you are well-equipped for sorting and returning small parts?”

Constanze nodded, then whistled. Her little robot buddy rolled out in front of her, hunkered down, and lit a bright purple symbol on its surface. With some electric snaps, ten more robot buddies piled through, skating around her in perfect synchronicity.

“Good. Lotte, your spirit magic – can it help the Stanbots in small repairs?”

“It most certainly can!” Lotte said. “I can sing everything back to where it needs to be.”

“Good, good. You and the Stanbots will perform that task. Constanze, I’ll need your engineering expertise for repairing vehicles and power.”

Constanze nodded again.

“Hey, I heard ‘cars need help,’” Sucy said, shuffling out of place. “I know my way around fixing cars. Cons can go poke at circuits or whatever, I’ll get all those cars back up to show-floor new.”

“Huh,” Diana said. “You know cars?”

“Why,” Sucy said, “are you implying that I only know potions, mushrooms, and poisoning people? Because I take offense to the idea I can’t have a third character trait.”

“You haven’t seen all her car magazines,” Lotte said.

“She has car magazines?” Akko said.

“I have a lot of secrets I keep from you,” Sucy said, rubbing her cheek against Akko’s.

“Well!” Diana said. “That leaves Jasminka and Amanda.”

“I’m with Cons and Sooce,” Amanda said. “That sounds like a fuckin’ party right there.”

Diana sighed. “I hope I don’t regret this, but… yes, that sounds fine.”

Jasminka popped a Beaver Nugget into her mouth and chewed. (Those are little fried batter nuggets. I don’t know what they taste like because I haven’t been brave enough to try one.) “I think,” she said, “I will go with…” Her heavy-lidded gaze crossed mine. I felt an irrational twitch of fear in my gut. It was just a dream, I told myself. Don’t judge someone for turning into a monster and killing you in your sleep. Unless it’s Freddy Kreuger. (Though, he was pretty easy to judge even before becoming a sleep monster –)

“Huh?” I said, realizing someone said my name.

“She’s going with Lotte, nerdo,” Amanda said, giving me an affectionate noogie. “Come on, let’s get this mess over with.”

“That’s the spirit,” Diana said, readying her wand. “I have an idea. Stevonnie, I’m going to create a target for you. Cast the object repair spell on it.”

I flicked my wand open. “Just say when.”

Diana said, “_ Tu’i A’u. _” A vortex of wind whirled at the tines of her wand and fluttered off, hovering just overhead in the middle of the circle.

I took aim and cast my own: “_ Sosomme Tidiare _!” Brilliant healing light burst from my wand and engulfed the target in a wash of –

“Phrasing!” Lotte said, so loud she did a little hop for emphasis.

“Goddamn,” Amanda said, startled, “you seriously need to take pills for that!”

“I do…” Lotte said.

“Please don’t make fun of her Tourettes’ syndrome,” Diana said.

“Sorry, Lolo,” Amanda said, with a sigh.

The repair magic sloshed in the air like a jacuzzi minus the tub. Diana stood underneath it, gently steering it in the air with her wand. “Akko, Stevonnie,” she said, “follow my lead.”

“Can do, Di!” Akko said, walking one pace behind Diana. I wound up walking to their sides – matching their pace still covered more ground than they did. Long legs and all. The other witches watched us approach our first stop several houses down the line from Thrillgrims. There was a building with a large mural painted on the side facing the street.

There were hints of an original mural – something with a lot of greens, blues, and purples – over which someone had painted another, much grosser mural. There were some naked people gathered around the opening to a very fancy-looking well, and… actually, I don’t want to describe what they were doing. Just know that I regretted looking at it for more than a few seconds. I looked over to Diana, whose expression was determined, her brow furrowed and her lips pursed. “We start here,” she said.

“I’ll take this one,” Akko said, aiming her wand. “What’s the magic word here?”

“_ Suas an Tobar, _” Diana said.

Akko repeated her words and a bucket’s worth of healing magic splashed free from my spell and against the building. The evil new mural melted away, shattered roof tiles and a chunk of corner that had been knocked down flew back into position and sealed up tight, and a broken window healed up like a sheet of ice freezing in fast motion.

“Woah, now!” Akko said. “That was like really quick and stuff!”

Diana nodded. “Once you get in the swing of it, you won’t even need to say the name of the spell. Likewise, Stevonnie, keep us topped off and we’ll have this town as neat and tidy as a scale model.”

I nodded. “Can I try that Tobar spell, too…?” I said.

“When you feel ready!” Diana said. “How musically inclined are you, Stevonnie?”

“Mmm,” I said, “I can hum a few bars, now and again.”

“Good.” Diana tapped her toe and heel in a quick staccato. “Keep the beat. Follow me.” She walked ahead at a rapid pace, her heel-toe style clicking the beat on the brick road. She flicked out her wand in time with the old song, sending repair magic washing out over missing bricks, over bent fences and smashed windows:

[ “One, two, three, four, ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73lj5qJbrms)

[ “Can I have a little more? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73lj5qJbrms)

"Sex, seven, eight nine ten

I love you~"

A huge smile broke over my face. Me and dad used to sing this all the time when I was a kid, teaching me about teamwork and how to keep my room clean and how to be a good friend to the Crystal Gems. It was one of the first songs I learned to play on uke, and it was something I shared with Connie – it was from a film soundtrack, after all.

Akko didn’t know the lyrics, but she picked up on the beat, and kept it going for us while Diana and I sang. I kept the healing pool filled, she and Akko flung out tides of repairing force, and singing and dancing we took Glastonbury by storm.

Like, a reverse storm, one that doesn’t dent your car or lightning-strike a tree down. What would you… come on, what’s it...

A dust devil! That’s the term I was looking for!

Like one of those.

* * *

Yesterday, Chariot had waited in the small, unfurnished waiting room of the courthouse for three hours. The chairs were metal numbers, too narrow and with insufficient padding. The walls were arsenic green in overlapping patterns of diamonds. And of course there was not so much as a single tome to read. She had nearly dozed off when the lights snapped off, emergency lights burned red, and a small, calm voice announced that London was in distress and please, may any able-bodied warriors volunteer their service to her defense.

Thus was the rest of her night spent battling horrors in the streets while Fafnir and Reptilicus clashed with the Necrodraco.

When the all-clear sounded, she joined the recovery efforts, rescuing and healing and repairing until at three in the morning she was dismissed at last with orders to report to the court tomorrow at noon. So told, she returned to her court-appointed hotel room, took a thirty-minute shower, and fell onto bed and into the arms of sleep.

She woke at nine in the morning from hideous nightmares. She choked down toast and jam at the continental breakfast and walked to the court through streets that had, in this part of town, had weathered the attack shockingly well. London, she supposed, was a town that bore strangeness and extreme violence with casual grace. She bought a magazine on the way in, last week’s issue of 2000 AD.

Croix had been hauled before no finer court than the Little Mothers themselves, an honor in a way. Their courthouse used to be a church, an idiosyncratic building of brick and raw concrete on Shacklewell Row. It still was, in a sense. The building had been deconsecrated on March 10, 1982, during the syzygy. Attempts to retake the church for the God of the Cross had failed spectacularly. When the Little Mothers came a-knocking and domesticated the church with their potent witchery, there was no real resistance to the change in ownership, though there were many broken hearts and prayers spoken in spite. Nothing different from the rest of witchish history, then.

Chariot took her seat, the same one from the day before, and opened, the first few pages sticking together under her thumb.

“_ A man ssshhould not die alone!” _ Judge Mortis said. “ _ You mussst join him! _”

Chariot breathed out, tried to flip back to the first page, and the door opened.

“Chariot du Nord,” said the woman who stepped out. She was dressed in a plain robe cinched at the waist with a black sash. She had flowers pinned behind her ears. “You are awaited.”

She set her magazine in the chair beside her, stood up, straightened her dress and hat, and followed the woman through the door.

The court was in the former chapel. The room was brick, the roof high and arched, tall thin windows casting an afternoon light into the chapel against the mood in Chariot’s heart. The church’s crucifix had once stood on a shelf supported by four columns, which now bore the imagery of eight of the Nine Olde Witches; in the rededication, the crucifix had been replaced by a lunar meteorite bearing the circle-and-arrow insignia of Gorgo-Mormo, poised on the outstretched palm of a statue of Woodward.

Below that moonstone was an elevated platform on which sat the Little Mothers. Croix sat cross-legged before that platform, ringed by petals of asphodel and basil. Ten jurors sat on creakingly old chairs – no more comfortable than in the waiting room, Chariot thought – their heads concealed by black, sacklike masks. The woman led Chariot to just outside the ring of flowers.

There she stood for a long, silent minute before Croix finally looked up from her lap and met her gaze. “Hey, _ tette di zucchero, _” Croix said.

“Hey, _ fille lilas _,” Chariot said.

The woman who walked Chariot into the room took her place at Croix’s left hand. Another woman was at Croix’s right. Both freed their wands from their belts in their casting-hand, and drew silver daggers for their off.

[The Little Mother of Tears spoke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hXgFpdttz0): “The witness is present.”

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke: “The court is begun.”

The Little Mother of Darkness said nothing, only casting her blind gaze on the court.

The Little Mother of Tears spoke: “Croix Merides. You who have devised a clever means of stealing the magic potential from witches, and has done so to two children. You who would harvest magic at the planetary scale. You who would create a successor species in the image of the shoggothim, who lost control of same. You who would usurp the holy work of the Nine. We have received eighty-three formal requests for your summary execution.”

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke: “Croix Merides. You who have devised a clever means to store and spread the energies of magic to all who need. You who, when pressed, made some amends for your crimes. You who would have sacrificed the entire planet to nuclear flame, the highest honor imaginable for the Daemon Sultan, most inevitable of the Highest Three.”

The Little Mother of Tears cleared Her throat: “I am moved to admit that the nuclear annihilation of all life on Earth would be a holy act, among the holiest of acts, however much I would prefer to be alive.”

Croix chuckled.

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke: “The trial thus begins. Chariot du Nord, you profess to speak for the holy-accused. This is a decision we must recognize as unusual, for when last we met, you were being prepared for execution for your unspeakable wounding Gorgo-Mother and for your failure in containing the Witchhammer. More: it is apparent that through Merides’s misdeeds you have been rendered incapable of flight, your students experimented upon, your own life nearly taken repeatedly. What moves you to speak on her behalf? What would compel you to stand here?”

Chariot took a deep breath, summoned the first line of her opening defense from her memory, and instead blurted, “I speak for her because I love her, Little Mothers.”

The mothers muttered among themselves. The jury shuffled uncomfortably in their seats.

“I…” Back on track, idiot. You’ve already ruined it, but… “I can also say with confidence that Croix Merides has, yes, committed many crimes. But she is not a monster, not someone single-mindedly fixated on destruction or revenge. However short-sighted her plans for the Noire Rod were, she only wanted to bring about a new age of witchcraft. She is repentant, she is willing to work to better our station, and she has cooperated with your authority since the end of the incident last week. I don’t believe she deserves an especially harsh punishment. I think a mind like hers is best turned towards improving the lot of her fellow witches. She’s already innovated our lives with the Sorcery Solution System and magic routers. Surely, with guidance and care, she can help smooth out this, uh, this rough patch we are experiencing and help bring the new age to its full potential.”

Wonderful. Brought that on home. Didn’t you used to perform before crowds of people with your tits hanging out?

Yes, but you weren’t defending your –

You weren’t pleading for Croix’s life.

The jury murmured. The Little Mothers spoke among themselves. Croix sat still, her eyes closed. She was nodding her head in time, maybe to some remembered song.

The Little Mother of Tears spoke: “An argument spoken with conviction.”

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke: “But not the only voice to speak.”

The Little Mother of Darkness spoke, and the awful finality of her words made Chariot's spine curdle with chill: “_Next witness._”

* * *

I hadn’t realized just how tiny Glastonbury was until we had cleaned up what felt like half the city… town? Half the place within an hour or so, and that was taking our time, seeing the sights, tidying up what our magic couldn’t set back in order. We were in regular communication with the rest of the crew; no problems, no surprises. Just a long walk repairing the city and singing every song we knew and one I made up for the occasion.

Felt like being home.

We took the long way around Glastonbury, working our way through neighborhoods and business centers, pubs (wow, there were a lot of pubs) and restaurants, plenty of churches. It was mid-morning – maybe eleven, I think – when we finally hit Glastonbury Abbey. The lawn was heavily spiked with stolen brick and glittery sections of metal.

“So,” Akko said, “we gonna clean that all up?” She twirled her wand around her fingers and managed to not drop or fling it. (She had tried to twirl it no less than ten times in the past three hours and now, at last, she had done it right. Good for her!)

“It would be prudent _ no _t to,” Diana said. “This place is ancient, powerful. It may interact with our magic unexpectedly. It’s best to leave it to the experts once they arrive.”

“Gotcha,” I said. I bounced the healing bubble on my head. It felt like an invincible soap bubble full of warm water. “So where do we go now? Back up and to the north?”

“There’s more Glastonbury to the southeast,” Diana said, gesturing. “I figure that we’ll –”

Two things hit us, one after the other. The first was the distant sound of an engine. It was the first we’d heard since last night. I’m not sure how the doppler effect works there, but we weren’t busy trying to fight a monster, so maybe that’s why we heard it earlier than before. That got us looking to the north, in the direction of High Street.

The second was the changing wind, blowing more northwest than southwest. That was when the smell hit us.

“Ooooh, Jesus,” Akko said, covering her mouth.

Diana coughed into her elbow.

I swooned and spat up bile. “Oh, man,” I said. “Ohhh man!”

Diana aimed her wand up. “_ Thurifer’s Gift! _” she said, fragrant smoke billowing up from the ground around us. It masked the unnameable smell but did not erase it. I could breathe through my shirt, at least.

“What the hell is that?!” Akko said, spitting into the dirt and pinching her nose shut.

Diana tied a handkerchief into a face mask before answering her. “The smell of a catastrophic amount of blood spoiling in the sun.”

I followed suit with Diana, ripping off a length of my uniform’s white shirt and tying it over my face.

“Aw, man…” Akko said, trying to breathe and speak through a hand-covered mouth and pinched nose. “Honk this mess. _ Metamorphie Faciesse _!” With a soft poof Akko changed into a vulture with Toucan Sam’s color scheme and Akko’s eyes. So, y’know, much, much creepier than a regular vulture. She walked out of Diana’s spell with a hunched and springy gait. She took a savoring sniff of the air. “Ahhh! And now that smells delicious! … Maybe this was still a bad idea. Hey, is that car or whatever like really close now?”

It was, though it turned out to be a motorcycle. It ramped off a building, sailed overhead, and stuck a three-point landing with the rider using a giant hook attached to the bike by a chain to drag it to a stop. The driver, clad head to toe in bright bike leathers, leapt off the bike and broke into a dead run right at me.

“Huh,” I said, calling up my shield and raising it.

“Get away from my daughter, you _ bird _!” said the biker, who sounded remarkably like my mom. She pulled off her helmet, revealing that she was in fact my mom, and she leapt and threw her helmet at Akko, who just barely flapped out of the way as it struck the road.

“Jeez, lady!” Akko said.

Priyanka tackle-hugged me, squeezing tight around the shield. “Oh, God, Connie,” she babbled in Hindi, “don’t ever scare me like that again!”

“Hi, mom,” I responded in Hindi. I had a floating feeling in my head, like something soft and round was pushing into my skull. The feeling of connecting a new skill to this body, this person. The first few times we became Stevonnie had been one long feeling of floating. “Try not to call me a ‘daughter’ in English, okay?”

“Right,” Dr. Maheswaran said, in English. “Sorry. Just – I saw the news, I saw that it was raining blood all last night, and the school wouldn’t let us come until the Wild Hunt vetted the town, and I’ve just been –” She caught Connie’s name and awkwardly skipped to, “I’ve just been so delirious with worry. The school didn’t tell us anything! Those –”

“They didn’t?” I said. “But they told me they told you.”

“They –” She let go of me and dug around in her pockets. “Damn it, where’s my…”

“Hey,” I said. “Where’d you get the motorcycle from?”

“Borrowed it,” mom said.

* * *

Ten minutes ago, Prof. Nelson kicked out the door to the garage. (It was mostly for brooms, but the school had a few delivery and maintenance vehicles and lawn care machinery. And it also had…) “Where the _frick_ is my bike, people?!” she said, stomping on the door she had kicked out of its hinges in the opposite direction than it opened.

“Mother Mormo!” Finneran said, recoiling from the garage. “That was completely unnecessary!”

“Dudes!” Nelson said. “You know how much money I spent on that bike? That I’m still spendin’ on that bike?! And somebody had the cast-iron ovaries to take it on a joyride out the…” She tilted her head to the open garage doors. “…the Gog-Magog gate, if my ears’re on right!”

“Well,” Prof. Badcock said, peeking around Finneran, “if I do recall, the mother of the new student asked if there were any vehicle she could borrow, and, well –”

Nelson slapped her forehead. “Uurgh. She better not frickin’ scratch the chrome…”

* * *

“Hnh, here we…” She scrolled through her texts. She pursed her lips and returned her phone to her pocket. “Okay. Maybe I was a little busy last night.”

I dismissed my shield at last. “You wanna step into the cloud?” I said. “It kinda stinks out here.”

“I’m a doctor,” Priyanka said. “I’ve smelled worse.”

I noticed Akko was gone. Diana noticed me noticing. “Don’t worry,” she said. “She went to look for the source of the, ah, odor.”

“Oh, I know the source,” Priyanka said. She gestured to the sky; witches and Wild Hunters were descending from the sky. In fact, in the momentary pause to demonstrate, I heard far-off engines. People were returning to Glastonbury. “It’s all over the news. You weren’t behind the Chalice Well being covered in blood, were you?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Priyanka put her hand on my bicep and squeezed. “I didn’t hear a ‘no.’”

“I don’t – I mean, it started raining blood after we took out the monster, so maybe we, uh, caused it, but it wasn’t, you know, intentional! Besides, it was gone all around us when we woke up, so –”

Akko came to a flappy landing. “Hey, guys!” she said. “There were all these weird hoof and claw prints in the blood around the Chalice Well! It’s super spooky, yo!”

“Hooves and claws,” Diana said, contemplating. “Ghouls?”

“Like… funny little green ghouls?” I said.

“Little, no. Funny, culturally speaking, they are famed for a certain sardonic sense of humor. Green, not common, but definitely present. What literature have you read on ghouls?”

“There’s literature?”

“Heck yeah there is!” Akko said. “It’s way more boring than you’d think, though, which kinda sucks.” She scratched and pecked the ground.

‘You can change back, you know,” Diana said.

“My mom knows a shapeshifter, she won’t be weirded out or anything,” I said.

“It’s true, I won’t be,” Priyanka said.

“Oh, nah, I’m staying like this ‘til we’re out of rotting-blood-smell range.”

* * *

The cable flicked back to life. “Aha!” Ford said. “Re-connected to the world!” He crawled out from behind the living-room TV.

“Excellent,” Stan said from the safety of the couch. “Lesse… “ He flipped through a dozen channels. “Hmph. News, news, news, cartoons for the kids – not even one of the good ones – news…”

“Let’s see what’s on the news,” Ford said, taking a seat next to Stan.

“Do we gotta?” Stan said, hesitantly returning the TV to BBC1.

“– that the “witch-trial of the century” is well underway as Antonella Croix Merides is tried in the highest court in witch society,” the anchor said. “Witch trials are famously swift, so it is estimated that the trial will be complete by 8 BST. Stay tuned for more updates.”

“Think they’re gonna livestream the execution like in _ Starship Troopers _?” Stan said.

“They didn’t ‘livestream’ the hanging in the novel,” Ford said. “I think that’d –”

“Wait. There was a book?”

“…are you insinuating there was a movie?”

“We gotta catch you up while we’re furloughed from adventuring, Ford. Oh, hey, look!” He gestured with a bottle of shandy.

The news had switched to footage from a camera crew on the ground in Glastonbury. They were, in fact, right outside Thrillgrims.

“Though tranquil now,” the current anchor said, “last night the town of Glastonbury was the sight of an intense occult event. Though there is little sign of it now due to the intervention of witchish healing magic, we can only speculate on the depths and –”

“Hello,” Ford said on the TV.

Stan then realized that the door was open and his brother was gone. What a fascinating development. He downed the rest of the shandy in a long chug, fished his eyepatch out of his back pocket, and wrote his pitch in his head.

Outside, Ford continued his explanation to the fascinated film crew. “– class 7 in _ Kemp’s Spectral Field Guide _, sometimes referred to as a ‘metaspecter.’ Fortunately, the witches of Luna Nova dispelled the entity in a pitched battle.”

“– and then!” Stan said, popping up just behind him, “They laid their heads down in this very bed and breakfast! I call it… _ Thrillgrims! _By Mr. Mystery! Need a place to hang your coat and lay down your arms after doing your part for this noble town, the jewel of Albion? Why, pop on in and enjoy a modestly-priced, modestly-themed room in a quiet, spiritually active part of the town where King Arthur’s dusty bones are taking a dirt nap!”

The news crew shifted their attention entirely onto Stan. “Modestly priced, you say?” the anchor said.

Ford sighed.

* * *

At noon, the Luna Nova team were formally relieved of their duties as adults with specialized training descended on Glastonbury to formalize its monster-free status and prepare it for rehabilitation. The witches gathered at the Gog-Magog gate, preparing to return home.

And also Priyanka was there.

“I’d go back with you,” she said, astride her parked, stolen motorcycle. “But due to some inadvisable decisions by my husband… Doug, specifically… we are now incapable of staying at Luna Nova. Or at least we’ll have to –”

A pair of headlights glowed in the gate. The witches hovered out of the way, and Priyanka walked her bike back.

A Luna Nova delivery van rattled out of the gate and onto the road. It came to a stop, the engine puttering out, and Greg opened the door and leaned out. “Hey, schtu-ball!” he said, waving at Stevonnie. “Guess who’s got a room in Glastonbury?”

“The cyclops came through,” Priyanka said, sighing.

Doug poked his head out of the driver’s side window. “The witches said it was a very safe place. Very classy. Modestly priced. It’s – what was it called?”

“_ Thrillgrims _, By Mr. Mystery,” Greg said.

Priyanka put a hand on Stevonnie’s shoulder. “Don’t hesitate to visit, alright?”

“Of course, mom,” Stevonnie said, hugging their mother. “Say ‘hi’ to Stan and Ford for me, okay? They’re pretty cool. We couldn’t have saved Glastonbury without them.”

Akko sighed wistfully. “They’ve really got it together, don’t they?”

Sucy shrugged. “At least in public. Oh… right. I almost forgot. Akko, your chemistry book is in your bag still, right?”

“Yeah!” Akko said. “I was gonna work on some homework but then I decided not to. Because I didn’t feel like it!”

“Cool. You better check it when we get back. Right away. No hesitation. You don’t wanna bail on chemistry this late in the game. Not when it’s been so good to you~” She pinched Akko’s cheek.

“He-e-y!” Akko said, batting at her hand.

Lotte smiled. “I’m just glad that we’re done fighting monsters for a while. Or at least a night.”

“Frankly,” Diana said, “I’m going to march to my room, draw a hot bath, and soak. Blossom Freshness is no replacement for the healing power of a bath.”

“Heck yeah,” Akko said.

The witches lit on their brooms, Stevonnie struggling to share a broom with Sucy as Akko shared with Diana. The five raced through, leaving Glastonbury behind.

* * *

Dr. Maheswaran set her bags on the floor. “Very quaint,” she said, taking in the common room of Thrillgrims. “I can live with this. Oh, uh, Mr. Mystery, sir?”

“Yes, ma’am?” Stan said, gliding right next to her.

“I’m a doctor, I’m going to need space to work remotely. Do you have, say, a room with some noise cancellation to maintain doctor-client privilege, perhaps with an ethernet cable so that my connection is uninterrupted?”

“I will direct this inquiry to my good friend and also brother, Mr. Nerdy. Take it away, Nerd!” he said, swinging his cane at Ford, who was helping bring in the rest of the luggage.

“Hm?” Ford said. “Did I hear ‘soundproofing?’ It so happens I never travel without multiple means of noise cancellation – just in case. I can convert one of the rooms into your own – what was it again, ma’am?”

“Doctor’s office for remote work.”

“Oh, easily. I’ll scan the rooms, see which we can give up the most readily. Wait – Stanley, did you get around to checking that blocked-off door next to the garden? The one that should open up into the garden, but there’s no door on the wall out there?”

“I did,” Stan lied. “I’m gonna check it out again, refresh my memory!” He ran off for the sealed-off door, ready for punching any weird thing that came slopping out of the mystery door.

Doug hiked down the stairs. “Honey, have you decided on our sleeping arrangements?”

Priyanka laughed politely. “I haven’t even sat down yet. Wait ‘til I get something to drink, then I can decide on sleep. Besides, we’re the only ones here tonight, right?”

It was getting busier outside, with more witches and authorities and newsies flooding in all the time, but so Mr. Mystery had said, they were the only people to opt for Thrillgrims so far. Maybe the witches were on to something, Priyanka mused. Surely this place must be difficult for mere mortals like myself to find without magical help.

(In truth, only Badcock had shown interest in Mr. Mystery’s ad, admiring his gumption. Everybody else coming here had other, safer, places to lay their heads.)

Dr. Maheswaran took a seat on the couch and cleared her thoughts. Calm down, she thought, and didn’t. Take a drink, she thought, and remembered that she couldn’t take any liquids in decent amount on the plane and had no opportunity to buy and fill a flask in the past few days, and cursed her lack of foresight.

She climbed off the couch and went for the refrigerator she saw in the corner, stopping when she heard an echoing “_ Sweet Belgian waffles! _” from down the hall. She ran for Stan, her husband just behind her.

“What seems to be the –” Doug said, skidding to a halt when he saw Stan bracing himself in what he guessed was the mystery doorway. From here, he could see a window not far from the doorway; outside the window was the garden, which the door should be opening up into. He could not see the door through the window.

Priyanka and Doug crept beside Stan and looked down at the dark stairway. The walls were smooth, dark gray just shy of black, and made of stone that seemed to radiate coldness. At the bottom of the stairwell, a good two or three stories, was a door.

“Well,” Stan said, “I thought we were done with ‘weird’ for a while. You can’t say this place ain’t interesting.”

“Is it safe…?” Priyanka said.

“Ehh… fifty-fifty ‘safe’ versus ‘instant death.’ Wanna do your doctoring from a magic basement?”

“I’d rather do it from a normal, non-magic basement, if at all possible.”

“Let’s split it fifty-fifty and you can do it in the attic.”

* * *

When we got back to Luna Nova, we were swarmed by teachers who checked us for injuries or lingering hexes, we answered a bunch of questions, and we split up to pursue all our little goals. I scarfed down lunch and took a nap in my room, dozing off for a couple hours.

No dreams. Thankfully.

After that, I kicked around campus for a while, getting the lay of the land, taking in the new faces, the scenery, the history. I didn’t dare approach the library this late in the day; I’d need as much time as possible to soak it in.

After a while, I got a message from Finneran. We’d seen each other briefly once we returned to campus, but she gave us our breathing room once we’d confirmed we were all okay and the one big monster was dead. She told me to come to her room immediately, so I did.

Wait, did that sound weird? It wasn’t, really.

Her room was two stories tall, the second story open and looking down on the first. It looked 70’s vintage and smelled like old cigarette smoke. There was forest-green shag carpeting under my feet, thick as Lion’s pelt. Finneran poured herself a glass of whiskey from a classy-looking cabinet in a nook decorated with framed posters of the Rolling Stones and some movies in the Emanuelle series – I’ve never heard of it, and weirdly enough no two posters had the same actress.

Finneran took a seat on an old leather armchair that squeaked under her weight. “Alright, Universe-Maheswaran,” she said, setting the whiskey bottle on the table in front of her. “Tell me what happened last night. Nothing you say leaves this room, so don’t hold back. I need to know what I sent you into.”

“Okay,” I said. She gestured to a chair opposite hers, the little table sitting between them. I took the seat, poured me some water from a pitcher on the table, and told her the story of what happened in Glastonbury.

She didn’t speak, aside from asking for a few clarifications. She tried to keep her expressions in check, but her eyes widened when I mentioned getting abducted, and she had to refill her glass by the time I told her what happened at the old monastery.

I left out the part where I died, of course, and the part about my nightmare.

“…And now I’m here,” I said, taking a seat opposite her desk. “A little banged up, a little tired. But I’m okay.”

“Mother Mormo,” Finneran said, refilling her drink again. She spilled a little; her hands were shaking. “And all the Nine. You’re something else… the whole lot of you.” She licked spilled whiskey from her thumb and drank half her next glass. She’d only filled them a little bit before, but this one was half-full.

“Thanks?” I said.

“You have a few – weaknesses. Some false starts. That’s fine. I’ll learn, you’ll learn. We will sculpt you into the finest witch yet seen, and make no mistake, this school has made the finest witches on the planet.” She emptied her glass.

I swelled with pride. “Thank you, Ms. Finneran.”

I wondered if I could get good enough to ask if we could turn off Yggdrasil.

“Come, now,” she said, setting her glass on the table and standing up somewhat shakily. “We’re going to – we have a few – you know. The, the paperwork to get to.”

“Oh, paperwork!” I said, brighter than I realized I could.

The paperwork was all stuff we hadn’t sorted out before getting sworn in to Luna Nova, specifics about signing up for clubs and setting a tutoring schedule with Finneran, all that sort of schooly stuff that Connie knew but Steven didn’t. At the back of my head he watched in awe as we worked through the menial labor of school.

Walking unsteadily, her face set in a smile she was unaccustomed to wearing, Finneran walked me to the door and sent me out. “Enjoy yourself,” she said. “Relax. Have you seen the news?”

“No, ma’am,” I said.

“The planet’s finally starting to calm down. Maybe you’ll get a little time to rest at last.”

“Phew,” I said, miming wiping sweat from my brow.

And I was out.

I stood a while by a window looking out onto Luna Nova’s front lawn. The sun hung low in the sky, students milled on the lawn, playing or talking or exchanging spells. Birds chirped. My stomach snarled at me with sudden and shocking anger. Oh, right. I hadn’t eaten since lunch and it was… wait, it was really that long?! My phone said it was past 6.

Eh. Dinner could wait a little bit longer. I needed to send the evening text, anyway.

I found a bench in the hallway, and as distant conversation teased my ears, I wrote out a lengthy hail to mom and dads and Gems. 

It was all nice and smooth sailing until I started to type the phrase, “By the way, I haven’t seen any Gem monsters yet. Are there any Gem monsters over there?” I hardly got through “seen” before the weight of the question fell over my shoulders.

There had been exactly zero Gem monsters since I’d arrived. I hadn’t seen any Gem monsters since the Sorcerer Stone dragon. The Gems said that Gem monsters would be crawling out of the woodworks, right?

Well, maybe they just thought it’d be Gem monsters, I thought. There’s no crime in making a bad guess.

Yeah, Garnet was in the room, and she has Future Sight, but she was mad at witches, and I guess she wasn’t feeling talkative about… no, wait. She’d be okay with telling me about witch monsters, right? So why didn’t she? Was she seeing a different future? Did she just not feel like telling us?

Does she ever feel like telling us?

How long did you live before any of the questions you had about mom get answered? And what did no Gem in your life ever tell you about the diamond in your belly before the school reporter and old guy did?

I remembered what Ford said last night.

Maybe I didn’t need to know right now. I deleted the sentence, rounded out the text, hit “send,” and slipped my phone into my vest pocket.

* * *

“Are we ready?” Ford said.

“As I’ll ever be!” Stan said, cracking his knuckles. Behind him Doug and Greg were squeezed tight, Doug with a club taken from behind the counter, Greg with one of the steak knives from the kitchen, and behind all of them, Priyanka with a loose iron pipe, also taken from behind the bar. (Doug insisted on the club; he was used to wielding them.)

“Alright. Count of three. One. Two…”

Ford opened the door, pointing his magnet gun into the dark space beyond. He sniffed the bouquet of the air behind the threshold. “Air is breathable,” he said. “Doesn’t smell stale. It’s cool, like you’d expect…” He stepped inside. His flashlight, held tight in his other hand, cast a sharp glow across the room inside.

Three round tables spread across the checkered floor, chairs stacked on top of them. A few booths to the left, flush with the wall. A bar to the right, rows of bottles glinting in the light, much to Stan’s audible interest. And at the back of the room, a stage with a stripper pole.

“Hello, secret strip club!” Stan said, quivering with excitement.

Ford stepped in, sweeping the area with his flashlight. “Air’s still breathable. No poltergeist effects at the moment. Barometric pressure matches the rest of the house… don’t drink anything just yet.”

“Whaaat,” Stan said from behind the bar, “I wasn’t gonna. I promise.” He ran his pocket flashlight along the top shelves, scanning for scotch and champagne.

“Man,” Greg said, scuffing his sandals on the dusty floor, “I thought my life was weird to begin with _ before _ all this stuff went down. And I’m _ still _weirded out by living on top of a strip club.”

“Doesn’t look like they used it much,” Doug said, testing one of the chairs. Perfectly usable and solid. He kicked back. For whatever reason, this place felt pretty cozy. He couldn’t understand why Ford was on edge.

On the stage, Ford aimed the magnet gun up and down the pole. “No unusual reactions. I believe this place is safe, at least on an initial inspection. We should probably vacate before dark, just in case there’s auxiliary manifestations triggered by solar or lunar patterns.”

“Or we can start tidying up the place,” Stan said, running a dusty towel along the dusty bar, “and open up an entirely new lane of cultural enrichment for this stuffy-ass New Age Jesus town! Man… like I tell ya, Ford, and so you know, new people, I always wanted to run my own strip club. Just couldn’t ever save up enough capital before I got banned from a state. It’s friggin’ criminal none of my scams got far enough! I mean, once you got a strip club, you’re set! It’s a self-sustaining operation that never stops spitting out money! Plus I hear you can gamble in nightclubs in this country, so that’s even more –”

“Stanley,” Ford said, holstering his gun, “I hate to interrupt your dreams of monetized vice, but we have a doctor who needs a teleconferencing room. The last thing she needs is even more noise while she –”

“Actually,” Priyanka said. She had hovered near the entrance. “It’d be kind of neat if we opened this place back up. It so happens I used to work at a strip club.”

Silence. Very careful silence from Stan, who covered his mouth with both hands before he said something that cost him a long-term customer, however very hard he wanted to ask all sorts of questions. Like if Dr. Stripper would like a third husband for her stay in Europe.

“On the weekends,” she said, “they wanted a live band to play while the girls danced. I could sing. I had a roommate who could write. We put a little band together, and I sang a few covers and some of our own material. I actually put out an album…”

“Huh,” Greg said. “You know, I think I had that album. ‘Waiting For You,’ right?”

“Yeah,” Priyanka said. “Small world.”

“You sang one of your own songs at karaoke. That’s a flex right there.”

Priyanka laughed. “Well, it was the only one that charted at all. We were on the _ Book of Shadows _soundtrack.”

“The Blairpsloitation flick from the 90s?” Stan said. “Or… was it the aughts? That whole stretch of time kinda blends together for me.”

Doug felt twin stings of jealousy and pride. Jealousy that he knew all eyes were on his wife, wanting, and that for the sake of cover he could say nothing; and pride that it was _ his wife, _the beautiful, skilled, talented Priyanka Maheswaran, that they had their eyes on. That her heart belonged, first and most, to him.

“The very same,” Priyanka said. She set her pipe against the wall, then rest against the wall herself. “Ah, the party we had the night the movie came out. That was my last night there, in fact. Things got a little… wild.”

“How wild we talkin’, here?” Stan said.

“Maybe when we get to know each other better,” Priyanka said. “Yeah. The movie money, the single money, it put me through college, got us our first home. That was the end of our time there. I haven’t been there in years. I don’t even know if it’s still open, it barely kept afloat back then. But, really, the money didn’t matter the way the memories mattered. The friendships. The faces that kept coming back, and sometimes even turned to me, even when I was standing there with all my clothes on.”

She felt for something in the darkness, resting like she knew something was there.

“You remember it, right, Doug? It was called…”

She flicked four light switches, one by one.

One by one the light systems snapped on; a dim chandelier overhead, spot lights for the tables, underlights for the bar, the spotlight for the stage. The walls, they could now all see, had a textured, charnel pink color, complemented with a stately purple for the wainscoting. And at last the neon signs burned alive.

By the door, just to Priyanka’s left, there was a name spelled in neon.

“[Heaven’s Night,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HXMl6mAlFk)” Doug said in a harsh whisper.

Heaven’s Night it was.

Ford let out a breath he’d been holding in. Doug stared in mute shock. Greg just nodded.

“I guess it’s ours, now,” Priyanka said, just above a whisper.

“First idea,” Stan said, “We’re gonna call it _ Heaven’s Night: By Mr. Mystery. _”

“No,” Priyanka said.

“How ‘bout _ Heaven’s Night: _ Presented _ By Mr. Mystery _?”

“Hm… that’d be fine.”

* * *

I caught an early dinner, eating light and taking a long time in doing so, getting out before the bulk of the student body showed up to get their own. I didn’t see anybody I knew in that crowd, so once things started to fill up I took my leave, walking toward the dorm rooms.

A headache pulsed at my temples, veins throbbing like in a cartoon. Yeah. Change of clothes, put some cute cartoons on my phone, and then, sleep. Good plan.

The plan lasted right up until I heard Akko squawk with terror somewhere down the rows of rooms. Of course. Of course.

Well, hey, they’re my new friends, and I am kind of a hero…

With one hand on my big pink sword –

* * *

“–phrasing!” Lotte said, bolting upright.

“Woah!” Akko said, grabbing a lamp post for balance. “Watch the tics! Not that you can, but… nevermind!”

“It’s alright,” Lotte said, gently stroking Akko’s head with her pinkie. “I need to work on identifying my triggers, anyway. I keep getting close, but there’s always some–”

Stevonnie barged in the door, startling Lotte and Akko but not Sucy. “I came as fast as I cou– ould?”

They took in the scene: Lotte holding up one end of a scroll, Sucy holding another, an open book heavily stained with liquid lying on the floor nearby, and Akko a little 16-bit sprite on the scroll, which was a printout of a level from some old video game. (Steven knew exactly which: Lawnmower Man, on SNES.)

“What in the hay?” Stev said, letting go of their magic sword and creeping closer. “Is that actually Akko?”

“Yeah, it’s me!” Akko said, jumping up on the scroll. “Sucy and Lotte saw me playing some old games on my phone and I guess they thought I’d like to do it for real! Sucy printed stuff out at the library, and Lotte animated the pictures with spirit magic! And Sucy decided to trick me because she likes to do that. Oh snap, gangsters!” Akko jumped out of the way of a stream of blue bullets fired from a car driving by on the printed street. The car had zero frames of animation, gliding away as Akko landed on a higher platform.

“Huh,” Stevonnie said, kneeling. “Can I watch?”

“Sure!” Akko said. “Toss them a pen, somebody! I wanna see you draw in a boss monster.”

* * *

Lotte handed me a Sharpie. I uncapped it, held it just above the page. “Can we set this down on something so I don’t tear it?”

“Oh, right,” Sucy said. “Crap, that’s actually a good point.” Lotte and Sucy set the scrolls down on the ground, and I leaned over, doodling out an evil version of Opal, with little devil horns instead of Pearl’s gem and a big machine gun instead of a bow. That felt right for Opal if she were evil.

...did I mention what a normal dorm room looked like? There was a bunk bed on the left, a single on the right, a triple-seater work desk taking up the back wall. It was lined with witch tools and small toys. A kitsch poster of Shiny Chariot was pinned up on the wall facing the bottom bunk; I saw it all the time in newer college movies, though usually not that big.

The drawing wasn’t the closest look, and her lips kind of turned into a big black hole in her face like a Shy Guy’s because I didn’t have a lot of room to draw both, but it came to life anyway. Evil Opal, rendered entirely in black marker lines, chased Akko around the level, firing off scads of laser bullets and flipping off Akko with both of her free arms. Akko had a great time, jumping and sliding and dashing around the streams of little BB laser dots.

At the end of the level was a large pit in front of the exit, helpfully labeled with a big EXIT sign on an arrow pointing right. She jumped onto a floating platform above the pit, waited for Evil Opal to show up, and only then took a flying leap onto the little shelf of land on the right. Evil Opal charged after her and immediately fell into the pit.

“Adios, ogre girl!” Akko said, saluting her fallen foe, and running right. She ran right off the paper, turning back to full size and tripping onto Sucy’s bed with a yip.

“Ha, whoops!” Akko said, rolling over. “I tripped.”

Sucy let go of her end of the scroll and flopped onto the bed next to Akko. “Eh, it happens. Hey, how about you take a break from sleeping under Lotte and have a go at sleeping on my single?”

“You wanna sleep under Lotte?” Akko said.

“I want you to sleep with me, idiot,” Sucy cooed.

“Ohhhh.” Akko laughed awkwardly.

Lotte touched my shoulder, startling me. “Sorry,” she said. “Maybe now’s a good time to step out.”

“If you think so,” I said, edging to the door.

“Hey, it’s cool!” Akko said. “Besides, I kinda had an arrangement to go to, uh, Diana’s room.”

“When was this arrangement made,” Sucy said darkly, sitting up.

“Last night,” Akko said. “I was lyin’ in bed, thinking, man, I sure hope Chariot is okay, and Diana said some stuff she told me not to talk about to anyone else, so we decided to share a bed tonight!”

“Cute,” Sucy said. “Well, you go have your fun. Spend a lot of time with that warm-blooded, blonde-haired, blue-eyed European girl from a rich family. Take a lot of pictures, laze about in those thick covers in a room with an electric heater. I hope I’ll be around to see you tomorrow. The nights, they get so cold, and when your dads are amphibians, well… the cold, she’s so very bitter.”

“Oh, you were adopted?” I said.

Sucy fainted onto her bed. “Oh, ‘were you adopted,’ he asks…”

“‘They.’”

“Whatever.”

“Don’t be a jerk, Sucy,” Akko said, batting her in the shoulder.

Sucy whimpered. “And now she strikes me. Rich girls mock my humble upbringings, the light in my life leaves me to die, and it’s blondes all the way down. The universe is so endlessly cruel… as Zhar-Lloigor teaches us.”

“She’ll be fine,” Lotte whispered. “She just likes to be dramatic. But, hey, if you wanna visit tonight, we have a free bed! You know, if it gets spooky all alone. Annabel’s coming over, too!”

“See what I mean about blondes?” Sucy said.

“We’re gonna be playing Tsar Realms and doing a raid with our Night Fall Puzzle Quest guild! We can send you an invite if you’d like to try it.”

“Maybe!” I said. “I think I’ve had plenty of excitement for a while, though, so I’ll probably just head to my room and have a lie-down. See you guys later, alright?”

“Seeya!” Akko said, waving.

I saluted and marched out.

The sun was low, the last of its light peering over the horizon. I realized just how tired I was, how my muscles ached, how my back felt bowed. I needed a night just to put my head to pillow and sleep, let the worries of the world melt away into the nurturing darkness. Provided I didn’t have a bad dream. Always a possibility.

Ah, my room at last.

I opened the door and came face-to-face with one of the framed photos I’d packed, Steven with the Crystal Gems. I blinked, wondering why it was floating in mid-air. I then realized it wasn’t floating.

It was pressed into the face of [a statue of black tar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW_mGgxz2lQ).

I screamed and slammed the door shut and pressed against it. I felt for Rose’s sword at my hip, I called up my shield, and fumbled my wand into my shield hand.

No time to think. No time to plan. Somebody has to have heard me. Somebody will help.

I don’t wanna die.

Please God don’t let me die.

Nobody came. There wasn’t even an echo of footsteps down the hall, no sound of voices. The windows, so far away, seemed to let in streams of liquid night.

Inside my room, there was a soft, gooshy noise like squeezing a handful of mud, then a sharp crack and soft thumps.

I opened the door, clumsily, with my wand-hand. The statue was gone. The picture had fallen to the ground, along with a handful of pencils and one of my school books. I set the sword down and knelt, picking up the photo. A long crack ran up the center of the glass, dividing Garnet into rough halves.

I wished I could believe the break was a coincidence, a quirk of chance.

I set the picture on the bed, grabbed my phone charger and my bag of clothes, and bolted out of the room, making sure the door was good and shut. I pressed flat against it, looking down either end of the hall. Nobody. I strained my ears and heard nothing but the rustle of my clothes and hair and the soft stutter of my heels against the floor as I shifted in position.

I was alone. For all those childhood nights I’d spent alone, my parents at a cocktail social/battling armies of corrupted Gem monsters, I had never felt more alone than now.

In under a minute I knocked on the Red Team’s door. Lotte answered. “Oh, hello!” she said. “Needed the company after all, huh?”

I felt the truth on the tip of my tongue, ready to spill out and turn the night into a wait for death or war, and said, “Yeah. I got the creeps.”

Lotte welcomed me in. She didn’t ask why I propped the door closed with Rose’s sword.


	10. The Short Life and Happy Times of Croix Meridies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's rough. Tread carefully.

Luna Nova had lights out at 10 o’clock; an hour later, Stevonnie lay awake in Akko’s bed with the Shiny Chariot poster for mute company. Lotte and Annabel whispered, just inaudibly, in the bunk above; Sucy slept with her arms crossed like a Nosferatu, so deeply that Stevonnie had nervously tested her breath just before turning the room lights off.

Eventually, even the sound of Lotte and Annabel ceased, and Stevonnie was left alone to their own devices.

They would not be asleep until after two in the morning.

Akko and Diana, over in Diana’s room, enjoyed each other’s company, drinking a little champagne and watching a movie on Akko’s phone, a new experience for Diana. She had offered to use a spell to enhance the experience, but Akko had shushed her before they had gotten too far. Akko insisted they not share a bed, it would be too weird, too soon. Diana agreed, and the two retired to separate beds, Diana in her private bedroom, Akko in the bed which had been vacated by Hannah and Barbara four days ago after the Incident. Ah, but more about that later.

Within ten minutes Akko knocked on Diana’s door, and Diana let her in. It was agreed: tonight was not a good night for sleeping alone. The shadows were a little too deep. Before the hour was half passed, they were asleep, Akko the big spoon, Diana the little.

In the green coven’s dormitory room, Jasminka was fast asleep while Amanda played games on her phone well into the night. Far below in her hidden cave, Constanze caught up on her toy photography, for the past week had been bad for her productivity, and the buffer on her toy-photo comics was shrinking past her comfort zone.

In Thrillgrims, the adults gathered around the dinner table, passing around a bottle of whiskey – Ford always handing it off to Stan without taking more than a sniff of the contents – and discussing just what they were going to do with the magic strip club downstairs. The word “livestream” came out of Stan’s mouth, a word that Ford had to have explained, only for nobody present to have the words to describe it. No sleep ‘til dawn.

In London, at 11:50, the trial of Croix Meridies was reaching its climax.

* * *

There had been three recesses in the nearly fourteen-hour trial day. There had been a thirty-minute break for lunch, three fifteen-minute breaks to clean up the blood around the Little Mother of Tears, and an impromptu twenty-minute recess to tend to a witness who had collapsed in the middle of her statement.

The statement was on the subject of how his son had taken his own life when he saw the footage of the nuclear weapon in flight, sure that death was coming and there would be no rescue. He declined to return to the stand when court resumed.

Chariot had not had the floor since her opening statement. It had been one unending chain of someone whose life was ruined by Croix.

Croix had held her poise through all of it, silent, impassive. The women standing guard over her kept their blades at her throat, and for how long the trial had gone they had not wavered. Chariot knew that the Little Mothers wanted their grips to falter, the blades to nick or scrape or slice or plunge. When Chariot had been put on trial for scouring the moon, the affair had lasted five minutes, and Chariot had spent all of it with an axe’s blade pressing needily into the base of her skull. Croix pleasing the temper of the gods necessitated a slower threat of execution, perhaps.

Her eye shot to the clock over the exit. It stood at 11:50.

There was a brief cleaning of blood leaking from the Little Mothers’ platform. It was a bother, but there was no way around it: the Mother of Tears’ neck ended in a ragged stump and blood flowed fresh and hot from it endlessly. It seeped into her white clothes, it pooled at her scarred and callused feet. With the blood cleaned, a witch wheeled in a TV on a cart.

The sight of it gave Chariot a full-body shock, a sensation like waking up into a deeper, stranger dream. It was a sight she’d seen dozens of times as a teacher and as a student and seeing it here, in a desecrated church as the victims of Croix gave their testimony to the blind and awful gaze of the Little Mothers, was an intrusion of the normal into the hideous.

The witch was a man referred to by the Mothers as R. Harlan. He wore a mask, plain gray and dome-shaped, with no eyeholes, and a warm coat. He was technically the lead prosecutor, though thus far he had simply stood opposite Chariot and waited and watched the endless procession of witnesses. This was the first thing he had actually done.

He dug around in a visibly-laden coat pocket and pulled out a brick of a portable hard drive, gently setting it onto the table and plugging the connector into the TV. With a minute of fiddling, the TV flickered on and a video started playing. He stood by the TV, arms crossed.

The first was a news report, recorded just an hour ago. The bug in the corner indicated it was a Delmarvan news outfit. The expression on the anchor was one that was growingly familiar with all news anchors, hollow-eyed and wet with tears. “Rounding out our nightly report on the ongoing crisis,” she said, “an excursion into Ocean Town by the Coast Guard found, quote, ‘no sign of life, human or otherwise.’ The entity responsible for Ocean Town’s final destruction is unknown, but the remaining population, last estimated at around 15,000, are believed to have all been slain between the last outgoing SOS transmission on Thursday night and this afternoon.”

Footage played of the Coast Guard trudging through the flooded ruins of Ocean Town. And they were ruins now; for how often the benighted city made the news for some new calamity or atrocity, there were always people in the streets, struggling to make it in a city that had given up on them. Now there was nothing, not so much as a crow in the air or a fly buzzing past the camera. The footage ended as the guardsmen came across a massive graffitied message scrawled across the capitol building: WE DIED FIGHTING.

More news footage. Kowloon, pitch-black, the corpses of unthinkably vast monsters sprawled in the streets, flashlights and sporadic gunfire lighting the night like sparks of phosgene.

Charleston, South Carolina. In the moonlight, an army of the newly dead shuffling onto the choppy waves at the Isle of Palms beach, the city burning them. Cut to footage shot from a helicopter, a spotlight burning on the sea where the line of corpses – five miles out from the shore and still a continuous line – cross some barrier one by one and vanish into nothing.

The Mosquee d’Ansango, in Niger. Not news footage, this, but careful footage shot by hand on a digital recorder. Men with guns and women with wands standing guard, aiming west, at the Niger river. Hunched figures wading through the dusty streets. The camera zooms in. The figures are not human; they are scaled or slippery, like fish or sharks or dolphins or frogs, no two alike save for their frightful claws and their huge, dark eyes glinting in the light of the camera. The gunfire begins, and the lead figure takes a bullet to the shoulder, and continues marching without slowing down, without the slightest display of displeasure.

There were a dozen clips from a dozen sources, across nine countries and five continents. None longer than three minutes. None needed to be.

It was over at two past midnight. Chariot felt like finding the nearest toilet and puking into it. The raw numbers were a faint echo of the vivid evidence of lives ruined and history wiped away by the long, bad week.

The Little Mother of Tears spoke: “Is this the last?”

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke: “Is there nothing more to say?”

Harlan said, in a voice higher than Chariot anticipated, “I have a question to ask of Ms. Meridies which should serve as my closing statement. Ms. du Nord, yourself?”

“I…” she said, her voice cracking, “I have a pair of testimonies to give.” The tiny flash cart in her pocket – no larger or thicker than her thumbnail – felt like nothing against that hard drive and all the misery in it. But Akko and Diana had handed it off to her just before she left, and after all she’d done for Akko, and all Akko had done for her, what could she do but trust her?

The Little Mother of Tears and the Little Mother of Sighs turned to the Little Mother of Darkness.

The Little Mother of Darkness spoke: “She who scarred the moon, step forward.”

Croix smiled at Chariot.

Chariot, feeling less prepared for this than ever before, did just that, crossing the distance in a few long strides. She fumbled the flash cart out of its plastic case and found a slot where it would fit. She slid the chip in, and after a short load, the video played. She stepped back into place as the video began.

The library at Luna Nova. Diana Cavendish sat in a chair at one of the study tables, a pile of books around her. The lack of sleep and abundance of action she’d seen in the past few days were evident on her face, but still she had the essential Cavendish nobility, that poise and grace.

“Good day,” she said. “I am Diana Cavendish, of the House of Cavendish. Before you issue your judgment of Croix Meridies, please understand the prior convictions of other witches of note. In particular I turn to the case of Wilbur and John Doe Whately, judged posthumously in May, 1929.

“The Whateleys attempted to return magic to the world in a similarly apocalyptic fashion as Croix Meridies, Between the two of them the brothers killed 38 citizens of Dunwich and nearly rotated the Earth into another, more hostile reality where human existence would be untenable. Their judgment: exoneration, in the name of ‘the betterment of witchkind in a fashion which pleases the True Gods.’ I believe a statue of Wilbur and John Doe is present in the very building in which this trial is taking place.”

There was, Chariot thought. It was overlooking a garden in the back of the former church. It was reasonably tasteful.

“The current Little Mothers have forgiven no fewer than six witches who attempted planetary destruction in the name of the furthering of witch-kind in the 20th and 21st centuries. In order of their most recent crimes:

“Joseph Curwen, final death 1927, personal body count estimated at just under a thousand, in addition to being the first name in necromancy across five centuries – and the most brilliant necromancer to ever live, preserving the knowledge and talents of thousands of individuals.

“The aforementioned Whately brothers, died 1929, responsible for 36 dead and millions of dollars in damages and mass censorship of the Necronomicon – and partially divine, brilliant witches cut down in their youth.

“Pious ‘The Lich’ Augustus, final death 2000, personally responsible for upwards of 10,000 deaths, whose failures led to the destruction of a Great Race city-state and the loss of no fewer than_ three _ avatars of the Outer Gods and the fatal injury of one of a fourth deity–” She paused to draw the sigil of Pargon in the air out of respect. “–but who rediscovered those divinities, who maintained places of powerful magic across millenia. The Little Mothers dedicated the ruins of Ehn’gha as a witchish heritage site in 2012. The Little Mother of Tears composed a most beautiful poem for the occasion.

“Grigori Efimovich Rasputin, last verifiable account of appearance in 2000.” Diana paused for effect. “I hardly need to dignify this entry with a description. Formally acquitted by the Little Mother of Darkness in 2006.

“The Suspect Initialed E.K., accused in 1941, 1999, 2000, and 2016, still at large. The very image for anti-witch intolerance, with a body count of a few dozen, an enemy even to other witches – but the mightiest living avatar of Yog-Sothoth.”

“Croix Meridies has killed no one, has inflicted damage that has already healed – the talents of myself and Ms. Atsuko Kagari give bear to that. I estimate that many of you are using her Sorcery Solution System as we speak. She had endangered many lives, and surely she deserves the punishment due, but she is brilliant and her solutions were changing the lives of witches even before Yggdrasil returned to full glory.

“As a Cavendish, I beseech you: show her the extent of your mercy.”

The jury muttered among themselves. Chariot blinked sweat out of her eye.

The video continued.

Atsuko Kagari appeared on-screen, dressed in her white New Nine outfit. (She had never voiced that title outside of that grove, out of earshot of the remains of the Nine Olde Witches themselves. Chariot wondered if anyone would take Akko seriously if they knew she had said that. Chariot wondered…)

“My name is Atsuko Kagari. I am,” her eyes flicked offscreen briefly, “recording this as official evidence for the trial on Croix Meridies.”

Then she closed her eyes, red like the jewels on the Shiny Rod, and started speaking from her heart. “I know Croix Merides hurt me. She took my magic away by tricking Chariot into using the Dream Fuel Spirit. It took a long hard year to find my strength again. She knocked me out and read my mind, she impersonated a magic artifact to make me almost get killed by anti-magic people, she poisoned Chariot, she tried to kill Chariot, she tried to turn me against Chariot, she, uh, tried to kill Chariot… then she almost got all my friends killed and also me, and then the Noire Rod tried to kill the entire planet… so, that was rough. It was really rough.”

Chariot bit her lip hard enough to taste blood.

Then, much more animatedly, Akko said, “And I wouldn’t change a single bit of it! Those experiences made me who I am today. Woodward and the Shiny Rod gave me the opportunity for a fresh start, one where I would be just like Shiny Chariot, and I turned it down, because it’s the hardships I went through and the mistakes I made that led me to where I am today. To who I am today.

“Sure, I had to work twice as hard to accomplish half as much as any other witch, but that taught me persistence. It taught me how to care for those who have even less magic than I do. I still may not be able to fly on my own, but with the help of my friends, I was able to touch the stars. Diana and I were the ones who unlocked the power of the World Tree, because it was about friendship and togetherness and – and reaching out to others who are in need, and allowing them to reach out to you.”

A sober look crossed Akko’s face as she continued, “And yeah, people have lost their homes since then. People have been hurt. People have been killed. But I’m working on fixing that. I am, and my friends are, and lots of witches, ones I know and don’t know. And new witches, too!” She smiled and pointed at the camera. “New people are waking up with magic in their blood and a burning desire to help make things better. Even people who don’t have magic have been helping with their wallets and their hands and their hearts. Even - especially Croix. She realized that what she was doing was wrong, and she helped us save everyone!”

Akko seemed to calm down a bit. “And she can help even now. The magic technology she made, the SSS and the magic tablets and routers, they’re helping us. They’re helping other witches. So please, Little Mothers, I beg you, find her innocent. Or if you do find her guilty, sentence her to community service instead of boiling her in oil or whatever.”

The camera shook. An off-camera voice Chariot recognized as Sucy said, “Akko, that’s not the kind of closing statement you’re supposed to give.”

Lotte’s voice said, “We don’t have time for any more takes! Just take the chip out and give it to Chariot before she goes!”

The video ended.

Muttering. Chariot couldn’t tell if it was good or bad muttering.

With a wave of his wand, Harlan moved the TV set out of the way. “Is that all, Ms. du Nord?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Very well. Little Mothers – witches of the jury – you witnessed Diana Cavendish and Atsuko Kagari. Wise beyond their years, kind, forgiving. Ms. Kagari wielded the Shiny Rod, the means by which the Nine Olde Witches allowed us to regain our power. Without them, we would not have a future.” He turned his head to Croix. “Ms. Meridies. You created the Noire Rod to circumvent this system. Yes?”

“Yes, sir,” Croix said, not looking at him.

“You knew Atsuko Kagari before you unleashed your weapons system. Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why? Knowing that this young woman, promising, kind, personable, was the bearer of the Shiny Rod, that it would inevitably unlock as she grew and matured?”

“Because,” Croix said, “I saw the same thing in her that I saw in Chariot du Nord. I saw an immature brat who desperately wanted fame and recognition, who was fumbling step by step and moment by moment on a path too slowly for the good of witchkind.”

“Chariot unlocked six of seven nodes within two years of obtaining the Rod. Why was that too slow?” Before Croix could respond, he continued: “Atsuko Kagari reached six before the end of a school year. Was that still too slow? Why did you presume to know better than Woodward?”

“Because Woodward’s a cunt,” Croix said. There was a single gasp from the jury. “Is that what you wanna hear? I’m sick and tired of playing by the rules of old dead assholes and gods that’ll bite your head off nine times out of ten. And I didn’t trust Chariot, and I didn’t trust Akko, because they’re both lovey-dovey peace-and-friendship dumbasses. I couldn’t trust either of them not to fuck it up.. So I did it all myself. I made Chariot eat the magic potential of a thousand concert attendees. I made my own Claiomh Solais and broke in the doors to the Grand Triskelion myself. And…”

She sighed.

“Well, I achieved nothing.”

“Croix Meridies,” Harlan said. “You have fairly sophisticated instruments for the detection of magic, yes?”

“I do,” she said.

“Tell me. What were the numbers you ran that night? How many people saw the Noire Rod? What were their reactions?”

“Well. Given there was a nuclear war going on, and magic had been returned to the Earth en masse, the Noire Rod had access to about… three point one two billion sets of the Earth’s eyes and ears. Not all at once, and a lot of them tuned out and ran for shelter after they saw the nuke. Still, that one-time injection of all the negative emotions a human being can feel from half of the planet, give or take, resulted in the Noire Rod having power on par with one of the small divinities.

“When Akko and her buddies took to the air, there were, mm, about a billion people still keeping tabs. Of those billion people watching, about 1% put all their hearts into praying or hoping or whatever-ing for those kids to succeed. A little over half of the people watching thought the girls were gonna die and had no hope whatsoever they would make it out – so that was more juice for the Rod. There were about, ah, 6-10% of viewers hoping that the witches would be killed… so that was even more juice for the Rod, and it diminished the amount of hope the girls received.”

“So, you’re saying…” Harlan said, pacing around Croix and the two women with knives at her throat.

“Statistically, Akko and Diana should be dead, and so should all of us,” Croix said. “There’s more power in hate and fear than there is in love. Always has been, always will.”

“The Ghooric hypothesis?”

“Yeah. That’s been a constant in my research. Positive energy doesn’t do jack shit. So, imagine my surprise when they actually do it. Against that much negative energy injected into an ICBM which had in itself been subverted by a utility fog mechanical organism, it should’ve been a numbers game: its number had too many zeroes for anything to affect it. But, well… as you can see, we’re all alive. I can say, though, that they did use all the energy they had available and then some, so, when they were done with their fireworks show...”

Harlan twirled his hand.

“There was a wave of positive energy from all those people who realized they weren’t going to be dying. And compared to the amount of Ghooric energy in the atmosphere, it may as well have been nothing. So, all the entities that crawled out of their holes this past week have been Ghooric, feeding on negative energy.”

“Which would not have happened if you had just let Akko live her life.”

“No, sir. It would not have.”

“That could have been the face of witchcraft. Our power restored by a bright young woman full of hope, achieving her dreams against long odds, bringing light and miracles back into the world. The final death count of the last week… how many is it?” Harlan said.

No answer.

He wheeled the TV back in place, plugged in his phone, and pulled up the first news article.

Four million dead. A hundred million wounded. 18 trillion dollars’ worth of infrastructure damage. Hospitals jammed to capacity, food supplies exhausted, trade routes disrupted, all air travel grounded, nightmare things returned to the land and sea and sky.

Harlan turned off the TV.

He said, “All this, because you thought Woodward was… what did you call her?”

“A cunt,” Croix said.

“Mhm.” He slipped his phone and hard drive back into your pocket. “You have turned mana into gall. You have destroyed lives. The world may never fully recover. Because in your infinite wisdom, you thought you could do better than the Nine.”

“That about sums it up, yeah,” Croix said.

All eyes turned to the Little Mothers.

The Little Mother of Tears spoke: “There shall be a recess.”

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke: “Jury, you have ten minutes.”

The Little Mother of Darkness spoke a word of sorcery, and the world turned to fog.

The church fell away, the darkness fell away. Mist billowed at Chariot’s feet. The sky was writhing with worming stars.

It was just her and Croix, sitting a short distance away, the same distance she had sat in the courtroom.

“...She said ‘ten minutes,’ right?” Croix said.

“She did,” Chariot said.

“So,” Croix said, lying down in the mist, “I feel ground all around me. I think it’s safe to walk over, if you want.”

Chariot did, and lay next to Croix. She put her hat on her stomach and looked at the vulgar sky.

“Have any heroin on you?” Croix said.

“I’m afraid not,” Chariot said.

“Bummer. They’ve been giving me methadone. Not the same thing. It’s actually worse to detox from, if you can believe it, a lot slower.” She laughed. “Guess that’s not gonna be a problem, though.”

Chariot couldn’t bring herself to look at her. It would hurt too much. “Is it over, really?” she said. “Was I just there to watch – all of that?”

“Yeah,” Croix said. “You’ve been tried before, right?”

She nodded.

“I’m guessing they didn’t make you sit for an entire fucking day.”

“No. I was in and out in ten minutes.”

“Yeah. I believe you. Witches don’t do ‘trials.’ We do executions and exonerations. They’re doing this to torture me.” Croix played with her thumbs. “Sucks to be them. I’ve willingly spent time in motels much shittier than that church, doing things much more dangerous than have two bored girls point knives at me.”

“You don’t think Akko’s testimony will help? Or Diana?”

Croix started to speak. Then she blew a raspberry. “They tried. But you and me… I think we both know what was gonna happen the moment they took me away.”

Chariot flinched.

“They’re gonna kill me, Chariot,” Croix said. “Maybe right here. Maybe they’ll take me out back first. But this is it. I’m not seeing one o’clock.” She built up the courage to look at Chariot. “This is it.”

Chariot blinked, and tears flooded down her cheeks. “...God…” she whimpered.

Croix kissed her cheek. “It’s alright.”

“It’s…”

“Chariot,” Croix said, “I called you an idiot in court. I tried to kill you, a lot. I hurt more people than you can ever imagine. They’re going to put a knife in my neck or a bullet in my brain or, fuck, they’re gonna do something even worse. Maybe they’ll even boil me in oil. And I fucking earned it. I’m gonna wake up in Hell and the Earth can start healing.”

Chariot sobbed into her hands. She was no longer lying on her back, but curled up, fetal, her body spasming with full-body grief.

Croix lay beside her. After a long, hesitant moment, she put her arm around Chariot’s waist. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s only right.”

They spent their last time together curled up in near-silence. Time slipped away, minutes peeling away in seconds. They had no time, and it was pouring away.

“Chariot,” Croix said.

Chariot said nothing.

“I… I wanna say you should forget me. Move on. Throw me out. I’m just an ex who ruined everything on her way out. But…”

Oh, damn it. Now she was crying too.

“You didn’t have to do this. You didn’t have to come here. You could’ve said no. But you’ve been here, all day. My last day on Earth and you never left longer than you had to. You could’ve run out. You could’ve sat it out. But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t let you do this alone,” Chariot said. Everything ached, her heart most of all. “I couldn’t.”

“Chariot du Nord, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. You were good to me even when I was the worst to you. When I’m gone, I want you to live to find love again. I want you to help see this world turn out the best it can. Clean it up for me. Make it a world that Akko will be glad to live in.”

“I will,” she said.

“I know you can. You’re Shiny Chariot, the great witch. One of the New Nine. You’ve earned the name.”

Chariot forced a laugh. “Mother Mormo, I thought to myself… ‘no way could they take Akko seriously if she called herself that, herself and her friends.’’

“It’s bold,” Croix said. “This is true. But that bitch got swagger, and I want you to tell her that. In those exact words. Or I’ll haunt you.”

The mist began to recede.

“Come on,” she said, letting go. “Let’s get the show on the road.”

Hesitantly, Chariot crawled away. She straightened her dress, centered her hat. Took a breath. Wiped away the tears. And waited for the end.

The world returned. The jury to her left, a single witch standing tall there. On the platform, the Little Mothers stood.

The Little Mother of Tears spoke: “We have come to a conclusion.”

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke: “It is uncontested that Croix Meridies is guilty.”

The Little Mother of Darkness spoke: “It is not enough that she has brought untold suffering to the Earth, above and beyond others of her scale. It is not enough that she has exhibited the most thorough and unwarranted hubris. What she has created is not enough to mitigate what she has stolen from us, from the glory of our gods, from the hope of our future. We consign her to be executed by the United Kingdom, for it is our brothers and sisters and others among the ranks of men who will suffer the most. We hope that this gesture will do some mending of our relations with the mundane.”

The Little Mothers spoke: “There is no mercy.”

The Little Mother of Tears spoke: “Does the jury contest our verdict?”

The juror spoke: “No, Your Most Holy.”

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke: “Good.”

The Little Mother of Darkness spoke: “[Dismissed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLVdpMWMM6c).”

The two women stood, carrying Croix with them. Croix was smiling.

The Little Mothers left, walking one by one under the arch, below the statue of Woodward. They vanished the moment they passed the threshold, one by one. The women marched Croix up the platform, through the threshold, and away.

Chariot’s composure, what little she had left, shattered, and she sank to her knees and bawled into her hands.

Harlan stood by her. “Ms. du Nord. I am sorry for your loss. I was appointed as prosecutor by the Little Mothers themselves. If I had any say, Ms. Meridies would have been shown some degree of mercy.”

“Go away,” Chariot whimpered.

He nodded, and without a word, joined the jury in shuffling out of the church.

Soon it was Chariot alone. In that place which had once been holy, she wept hot tears for the only woman she had loved.

When it seemed at last that there was no grief left, she slumped out of the church.

The church was empty at 12:43 in the morning.

* * *

The archway gate led to a small, plain room. Concrete walls, reinforced doors, double-sided mirror. The two women sat Croix at the table. She hardly had a moment to think about how they were going to kill her before she saw the heroin.

It could only be heroin. There was a measure of black tar, a little tin full of water, a Bunsen burner, a plump cotton ball, a small rubber hose. Not that she needed that hose.

“Really,” she said. She pondered the many, many ways this was trapped. Could be cut with bleach, maybe. Water could be acid. Air could be subtly laced with explosive gases – no, that was pretty outre, even by standards of exotic execution. It seemed they were intent on letting her overdose to death. Or pretend to overdose her to death, then–

Fuck it.

Not getting out of it either way. Might as well cross your fingers and hope for the fun way out.

The two women watched, silent, as she prepared the Junk one last time. It was a comforting ritual, one she had performed countless times ere these years long gone by. For a moment, as she dropped the cotton ball into the mixture, she could even forget that she was committing suicide with a little smile on her lips.

This is it, she thought, watching the black tar dissolve. This is the last minute of your life. You’ll never see Chariot again. You’ll never see the sunrise. Never wake up, but then, when was the last time you woke up without feeling like shit? Maybe that’s a blessing. Maybe you never really deserved to see Chariot again. The sun will rise on a world grateful to see you gone.

Is that why you’re not afraid? Because they’re all right?

Because you deserve it.

This is it, she thought. The climax. The reason I was put here on this Earth. To fail, and to ruin as many lives as I can on the way down, before poisoning myself to death and getting disposed of in a landfill. If you’re lucky. “Hog feed” may be in the cards. “Blast furnace” if they wanna pollute a little.

Well, she thought, drawing up a full needle of heroin out of the cotton ball. She tapped it. Squirted a tiny bit out to make sure no air bubbles remained. Stupid, really. But it’s the ritual, you know? The sensation of grounding. Putting the brain at ease.

If she was gonna have one last dream, she had to have a good one.

She rolled up her sleeve, planted the needle in the constellation of track marks, and injected, just a little. She didn’t feel numbness; she pulled back on the plunger and saw blood float up into the mix. Yes. Her last shot, and her aim was perfect.

She emptied the dope into her system, a long, decadent squeeze that she had only ever dreamed of before. What mercy, her executors. What good sport they were. The first dose hit her brain as she pulled the needle out, tossed it to the side. She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes.

There was a coldness in her hands and feet. It spread up her legs, down her arms, a numbness racing to her head. Before she fell into the darkness, she fixated her mind on the only thing that had made her life worth living.

For the last seconds before she fell into the darkness, she dreamed about Chariot.

* * *

I had my first breakfast with the rest of the witches of Luna Nova that Monday morning. Fried potatoes and eggs. Pretty good.

I had slept, eventually, but it was a long and bad night, and my dreams, though I thankfully forgot them, were legendary, for how icy-cold and damp my sheets were when I woke up. Must’ve just been regular ol’ nightmares. But I was here, and the monster who shall not be named didn’t show up. And breakfast was pretty good.

I saw Akko jump out of her seat halfway across the cafeteria. (I wanted a little space. What can I say.) I decided to follow her, since, hey, why not? It must be exciting.

You don’t need to know about how I got there. It was fun, but…

The thing Akko was so excited for, running there straight away without so much as trying to fly or even ask one of her flight-capable friends to get her there, was Chariot returning at last. She was flown out of the Tor gate by Prof. Nelson. It was weird to see her later when my first impression of her was flying out of that gate, her goggles over her eyes, her lips pursed in a somber grimace.

“Chariot!” Akko said, all smiles, skidding to a halt just ahead of Chariot. “You made it! Did the video work?” I came to a stop just a few paces behind her, breathing heavily. She could really book it. I was impressed.

Chariot dismounted the broom, landing on the grass heavily. She adjusted her hat. “Akko,” she said. “Croix is…”

Akko’s expression deflated. “...is… they… they found her guilty?”

“They…” Chariot swallowed. “Croix is dead.”

“...no,” Akko whispered. “No, they… they… they can’t just…” She turned away from Chariot and wept. “We tried – we tried so hard – she – she didn’t – they couldn’t–!”

“You did your best,” Chariot said, scooping Akko into a hug. She was weeping too, steady tears. She’d had her share of tears already. “You did your best, Akko. She was proud of you. She… she only wants the best.”

“We couldn’t have done it without her,” Akko stammered. “We’d all be dead. She… she wanted to… she just wanted to save the world…”

I couldn’t watch. I didn’t want to leave. I could feel disharmony spike me in the chest, radiating with a second, deeper shame: Akko was miserable and the worst part was that I had to be around her while she was miserable.

Well. You can do what you do best.

“Was…” I said. “Was there a song? That you shared."

Chariot sank to the grass with Akko, who wept into her shoulder.

“There was,” Chariot said, and hummed a few bars.

I knew the song. Dad had hummed it once in a while – Doug did. Those times he’d come home late when Priyanka was asleep after work, exhausted and maybe more than a little drunk. As he helped Priyanka up to their bed, he would sing a little song to keep her from being too grumpy about being moved. If she ever was grumpy, it was only pretend-grumpy. She loved him, after all, and the bed was much nicer than the couch or the kitchen. And watching this strange exchange of love, Doug would sing, not very well, but with feeling.

I knelt on the grass, near Akko and Chariot,[ and sang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2L9XT9UpNM).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woooo! Happy tenth chapter, everybody!
> 
> ...
> 
> ...e...everybody...?


	11. Even Gay Space Rocks Get The Blues

Akko wasn’t ready to talk about Croix until Thursday.

Four days. Four days! I know life is precious and always running out but my God, it was so nice to just have a few days just pass. The week before we came to Europe had, in retrospect, passed like I’d just said that: “a week went by.” But in the moment, as I think back, Steven was packing and unpacking Cheeseburger Backpack again and again, trying to think what he wanted to bring most, and how he had to share it with Connie. And Connie spent her time organizing her meds and downloading a bunch of comics and books onto her tablet and, every night until they left, watching Priyanka come home, drink herself asleep, and refuse to talk about the trip. She had good weeks and bad weeks and that last week was maybe the worst in a while.

And then we actually got here and had some of the longest days I’ve ever had. And bear in mind, I’ve been to space, multiple times.

So it was a blessing, actually, to just start to settle into Luna Nova. I alternated between watching classes in progress and getting caught up on remedials by teachers who had no other classes to teach at that hour. I met most of the faculty, got to see the entry-level stuff for a couple dozen disciplines and classes. I took notes, I started narrowing down my schedule for the fall.

I made no new friends.

I walked down the halls with my head high, my gem polished and shiny, and people parted around me, giving me enough room that I could’ve spun down the halls like a top and not bumped into anybody. It became increasingly obvious that I was the tallest non-ogre, non-cyclops person on campus. Every teacher had to look up at me. Every student did. I only saw Sarah a few times; she stayed out of my way and gave me a purposefully blank look that reminded me of Onion.

In that Onion didn’t have to try to look blank. He’s just a weird little kid. Sarah was faking it as hard as she could.

I actually brought it up with Sucy on Wednesday when she and Constanze came over to my room (which Diana had papered over with warding and protection spells for my peace of mind) to play emulated arcade games on one of Constanze’s Stanbots (so I found they were called).

“Why isn’t anyone else talking to me?” I said.

“Because witches suck,” Sucy said.

Cons grunted. Her spiky-haired hero just stood and watched a minion land a punch on Sucy’s blue-haired housewife.

“It’s true,” Sucy said. “We’ve been kicked around so much that we don’t trust anybody. And we can do magic, so that puts us above all the sad little humans. So you show up, no witch heritage, and you’re a giant with a magic sword and shield who’s just so dang strong you can’t help yourself? Busted up a monster on your first night out? And raised no fuss when a fairy kicked your parents out of Luna Nova? Oh yeah. Everybody hates you.”

I felt my heart sag in my chest. Not plummet. Just sort of slump.

“It’s cool,” Sucy said. “Nobody likes me either. Or Constanze. Or, hey, Akko.”

“But didn’t she and Diana save the world?”

“From what? Painless nuclear devastation? Lotta dead parents out there now. Lotta hometowns got smashed or pissed on or kaiju’d. Most of those students you pass wish they were a pile of ash right now.”

“...Jesus, really?”

“Yep.” She teamed up with Cons, throwing Cons’s hero at a cluster of mooks.

“I mean…” I hit pause, doing nothing, and Cons read the room and pulled up the emulator’s menu, which did the pausing for me. “Why would… do they really not care? At all? Akko and Diana saved the world, Akko brought magic back.”

Good job faking enthusiasm for magic being back, Stevonnie. Remember that it’s fake enthusiasm and not real enthusiasm or you’re gonna hurt a lot when you turn magic back off.

“You overestimate the goodness of mankind,” Sucy said, turning to face me at last. “Witches included. See, magic was dying, but there was a  _ status quo _ . We had our places to be and things to do. The noose was familiar ‘cause it had been hanging around our necks for so long. Now the gallows are on fire and everybody’s screaming and dying and yelling at us to help them, and we’re free, and we can do anything we want. But what we all really want is for everything to be back in order, everything to be going the way it was before, with that hempen necktie good and tight and where it belongs.”

Cons turned to look at me too. I felt the expression I was making and tried to look less… devastated, I guess.

“Lemme guess,” Sucy said. “Loving parents? Nice hometown, everybody likes each other? Ethnically-integrated suburban paradise?”

“...kinda..” I said.

“Welcome to the real world,” Sucy said, tugging back the lock of hair permanently hanging over her left eye. The socket was ringed by faint old scars – a bite mark, maybe. A human bite mark. The eye was translucent glass.

I burst into tears.

Constanze slugged Sucy in the arm.

“Come on, better me than the rest of the universe!” Sucy said, rubbing her arm where Cons struck her.

Cons grunted.

“Fine.” She mumbled under her breath. I admit I wasn’t paying the most attention at this time, well, for obvious reasons. It’s weird thinking back on it so objectively with nothing more than a nervous twitch in my chest. I was pretty miserable in the moment, though, and it was a while before I realized Sucy had climbed onto my bed, taking a seat at the foot of it. I snuffled, wiping my nose on the inside of my vest.

She had the decency to cover her eye again. “Hey,” she said.

“Yeah?” I said.

“I have some good news. You know how the people back in your hometown like you for you?”

I nodded.

“You know why they like you?”

“Uh…” I said. “That’s a loaded question.”

“They like you because of who you are,” Sucy said. “If it really is suburban paradise, they think you’re cool because you’re tall and strong and fight monsters and lose gracefully. Does that sound right?”

I nodded again. “Yeah, I guess that checks out,” I said, glancing off to the side. Anxious thoughts nibbled at the edge of my mind.

“Well, guess what. You know how the students here  _ don’t _ like you because you’re tall and strong and fight monsters and lose gracefully, and they’re probably racist, especially Hannah?”

“Who?”

“Don’t ask. Anyway. So, if they don’t like you for being you, I have good news: they can all go fuck themselves.” She put a cool, clammy hand on my leg. “You don’t need them. Their love is superficial and meaningless. The actually cool kids like you, ergo you are liked by the people whose opinions you should care about.”

I sniffled. “I guess.”

“You don’t guess, you know,” Sucy said, patting my leg. “‘Cause Serious Sucy told you so.”

I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out.  _ Here comes a thought…  _ “Okay. I think I’m feeling better.”

“Cool,” Sucy said. “So how’s about we punch some more guys?” 

They hung around a while longer, enough to get through a few more levels. I told them I was tired (true enough) and Cons saved our place and her and Sucy took off. I listened at the door, waiting for Sucy’s voice to fade down the hallway. I took a deep breath,

* * *

...and Steven and Connie landed on the ground next to each other.

“Connie,” Steven said, “are you sad that Luna Nova doesn’t like us?”

Connie shrugged. “I never really had friends until I met you. And, well, other than Jeff, I still haven’t made a ton of my own. Or, uh, any. So I guess it doesn’t bother me at all.” She waited a moment, then said, “Does it bother you?”

Steven looked harrowed. “I have never been more bothered by  _ anything in my entire life _ .”

_ Oh, damn it, _ Connie thought. “So. Do you wanna do something about it?”

“I do,” Steven said, not looking any healthier. “We have to ask somebody about… witch stuff.” He brightened a little. “How about Wangari?”

“Why her, specifically?” Connie said. “Everybody just faints at the sight of Diana. Maybe she’d know the best about how to… I dunno… ingratiate ourselves.

“She’s a student reporter! If she’s interviewed everybody the way she tried to introduce us, she must know all their likes and dislikes and weaknesses and stuff. So tomorrow we’re gonna ask if we can borrow all the back issues of the school newspaper and do some reading!”

“...or just ask her for tips?” Connie said.

“Or that,” Steven said. He wiped a wave of flop-sweat from his forehead. “I need to calm the heck down. Do we still have those British candy bars?”

“We do,” Connie said.

“Let’s eat some chocolate and stuff until I stop freaking out.”

And so they ate Cadbury chocolate and read spooky stories long into the night.

* * *

Thursday afternoon, Wangari handed out copies of the school newspaper to everyone at lunch. She made sure to hand me mine directly, unfolded so that I could see the cover image. It was a photo of my mom, her dress torn and undone, slamming Wangari, who was dressed in a 20’s flapper getup, over her knee. The caption read “NEW STUDENT’S MOTHER: MOM, DOC, WRESTLER, SINGER: THE WARRIOR-POET QUADRUPLE THREAT!”

I bit down dissonance and ate my lunch, alone, again, reading through the various news articles. I got mentioned in a few bold paragraphs that gave the bare essentials (age, point of origin, newness) and otherwise just focused on my mom and dads. There was a really, really long interview with Priyanka that took up multiple pages, which I skimmed over for how much detail it went into. Connie could handle it later, I thought.

(Or Steven if he had a moment alone.)

The paper was almost entirely puff, which I appreciated. I already had enough serious information clogging up my brain. I just needed words to look at that made my brain stop complaining about boredom and thus fill that boredom with anxiety.

I wondered about Wangari. She hadn’t tried to interview me again. She purposefully avoided news about monsters and Croix – something that every teacher had talked about, every student, in hushed tones behind my back, or elliptically when trying to discuss why Chariot wasn’t here or why they had trouble managing their new digital tools.

I should definitely try to talk to her, I thought. See what she was up to. In a way she was my first friend I made at Luna Nova. I figured I should ask Akko where her room was.

* * *

Me and Akko met after class. At three in the evening – well, afternoon, but the sun was low and heavy and the clouds were growing thick, coloring everything gray – we meandered around a large tree on the lawn. A group of fairies were taking a break, lying on the grass, chatting and smoking. Behind us a few witches were gathered around a summoned fire spirit floating foetally in the air. My breath came out in thick clouds. It was kind of really cold out, this was true. Akko didn’t seem to mind.

I had questions to ask, totally harmless ones, and only one came out of me. “What was Croix like?” I said.

“Well,” Akko said, balancing on one foot on a stone bench, “she was a very passionate woman. She really wanted to make the world a better place. She just had funny ideas about how to do it. And I guess they were a little murdery here and there, but…”

“It’s alright,” I said. “I have some friends who tried to murder me, too.”

“You do?” Akko said. “Cool. What’re they like?”

“Well –” No, idiot! Connie shouted inside my head. “– maybe when I get to know you better. It’s a little personal.”

“Oh, okay, sorry about that,” Akko said, trying to hop onto her other foot and nearly whacking herself in the crotch with the edge of the bench. “W-well! Croix didn’t really think of me as a friend, and… well, I guess the last time I saw her she had a black bag on her head and she was being taken away by Wild Hunt guys. And right before that she was giving us, like, instructions on how to stop the nuke, and before that she was about to die, and before that she tried to kill Chariot… a couple times…”

She took a seat on the bench at last. “Okay. There was that time she invited me up to the New Moon tower, and then she drugged me and poked around in my brain – I found that part out later. So… zero. I have had a total of zero friendship moments with Croix.” She rest her head in her hands. “But she helped us save the world… right after almost ending it, but she wanted to set things right. She put me through a lotta hell, but I came out the other end a better person. So I can’t really hate her, no matter what. I can’t even hate Chariot and Chariot got tricked into eating my magic potential. I was mad, yeah, but Chariot didn’t tell me she was tricked.”

“By who?” I said, sitting next to her.

“...Croix…” Akko said. “Damn it. I just… I don’t want to hate her, you know? She was messed up, but she just wanted to do what she thought was right. Chariot loved her, for a while, anyway. And I guess she still does, even after all that happened. I just… it should be hard. I should be struggling. But I’m not. I just… it’s not right, you know? That she was killed, I mean. She deserved another chance.”

She looked me dead in the eye. “Is it weird, wanting to love someone who did so much bad stuff?”

I put my hand on hers. “Not at all,” I said. “I do it a lot.”

I closed my eyes and a parade of faces rolled past. Most of all, heaviest of all, was that of my mother. Her austere, expressionless painting. The ghost of a smile in her photo with my dad. The hopeful, eager message she left for me, me as Steven, me as Nora. The look of shock captured so elegantly by Mr. Ford.

The diamond in my belly.

“_Your_ diamond! _My_ diamond! _Pink_ _Diamond_!”

Akko pulled me into a hug. “This is getting heavy,” Akko said. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s alright,” I said. “Heh, really got off-topic from what I was gonna ask you about.”

“Oh, right! What did you wanna know?” Akko said.

“Have you ever been to Wangari’s dorm? Where does she go?”

“Oh! They have a dorm, the yellows do,” Akko said. “I think they’re called the Knights of the King. You know, like the Crimson Corsairs –” she pointed at her belt “– the Verdant Viceroys –” she waved in the vague direction of the dormitories “– the Rhapsody in Blue, you know, like that!”

“What am I?” I said, looking at my pink belt.

“I don’t know. Oh, right, the question! Wangari doesn’t really spend much time at her dorm, she’s always in the news room, in the Cultural building.” Akko pointed vaguely. “Her and hers should be there right now, writin’ up a storm, taking pictures and stuff!”

“Thank you,” I said. “I think I’ll go and visit.” I let go of her hand and hopped off the bench. “Anything else I should know?”

“Not at all!” Akko said. “Well, I guess I should warn you she likes to come on strong!”

I laughed, a little. “Yeah, I know that much.”

“But she’s a nice lady! She won’t do you dirty.”

“I mean,” I said, thinking about the pictures of mom in the newspaper – but not too hard, “she did kinda do a lot of weirdly… like…intrusive… stuff… you know, question-wise, with my mom…”

Akko gave a dismissive hand gesture. “It’s fine. She’s fine.”

* * *

The news room was a basement room, formerly a large janitor’s closet, which given the janitors were ogres and whatnot meant it was quite large enough for their needs. The fairies abandoned it after a poker game went bad in a big way; some say that fairies could in fact not enter the room anymore for fear of the fatal grudge overtaking them and the violence beginning once more.

It was a pain keeping the place dry, and they had to go to intense lengths to buy computers with more than one color, but that just made the room just a little more their own. They worked hard day and night and nothing could stop them from bringing the truth to Luna Nova.

At present, Joanna was napping on one of the hammocks and Kimberly was playing a game on her phone. Wangari was in the midst of a deep dive into the darkest corners of the internet, well into her tenth minute.

After watching something she would not soon forget, she took off her headphones, turned around in her spinny chair, and cleared her throat.

Joanna sat up. Kimberly glanced her way, but not too far away from the phone.

“Guys,” she said. “You know Stevonnie Universe-Maheswaran? The new kid?”

“No, I thought you meant the famous actress with the ten-syllable name,” Kimberly said, looking away from her.

“I haven’t forgotten, m’am!” Joanna said, rolling out of her hammock and adjusting her glasses. “What did you find about them?”

Wangari unplugged her headphones and hit “play” on the last video she watched.

In it, two kids, who looked like they could be Stevonnie’s kid brother and sister from different marriages, were dancing on the beach, an upbeat pop song playing muffled in the near distance. They closed the distance between them, the boy swept the girl up in a twirl, and the two of them turned into bursts of light. The pink diamond in the boy’s navel, a dead ringer for Stevonnie’s, swirled up to the midpoint of the humanoid figure forming out of the two merging wells of light. When it affixed itself in place, the light burst away, leaving Stevonnie, dancing on the beach alone.

Wangari became aware that Kimberly’s chin was now on her shoulder.

“Is that a fucking gemstone djinn,” she said, pointing in the background of the video. Indeed, there was a tall, unnaturally thin creature with a nose like an ice pick and hair like a 50’s muscle car tailfin. She was politely clapping along to the beat.. A monstrously huge pearl was embedded in her forehead. “Is the new kid some kind of… rewind this.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Wangari said, and switched tabs. By some small miracle, she hadn’t found one with Garnet in it; instead she just laid out individual social media posts of Steven and Connie and Stevonnie, showing that the three of them were in fact just the two of them, sometimes in one body. And they hung out with a walking pike, an all-devouring purple orb seven Gamecubes tall, and an inconsistently-sized guacamole-colored creature with a 3D Dorito haircut and an uneventful Twitter account. Pearl-headed, amethyst-clevaged, peridot-also-headed.

And then there was the water-winged abomination that had dried out the Atlantic, posted casually, as if she hadn’t threatened the Earthly biosphere and given the entire world a little taste of apocalyptic terror ahead of the true apocalyptic terror to come a year later. In a tearful Throwback Thursday post by the guacamole chip monster, the ocean-stealer was posing unenthusiastically next to a sculpture made out of toilets.

“How,” Joanna said, dazed. “How does the new kid have the ocean monster on their dash?”

“This actually bears further investigation,” Kimberly said. “How did you find it?”

“Stevonnie posted on Facebook under their name. All of these people were also on their social stuff. Zero encryption, zero hiding.”

“Wow,” Kimberly said. “If anybody at this school finds out –”

There was a knock at the door. “Hello?” Stevonnie said.

Wangari OneTabbed her collection of damning evidence. “One second!” she said. “I’m… almost there!” She whispered: “Guys, act casual.”

“Why? Why do we have to?” Kimberly said through grit teeth.

“Because if anyone finds out the new kid is part djinn, the new kid is as good as dead,” Wangari said, pushing away from the computer. “And that is in bad form.” She hiked over to the door and held out three fingers. “Achieve on three. One. Two…”

She opened the door. Stevonnie stood just outside it, face obscured by the door frame. “Hello,” they said again, kneeling a little. “Can I come in?”

“If you will give us just a moment!” Wangari said, ushering them in. “Joanna, could you –”

Joanna swiped her wand and a chair and can of Vimto hovered through the air, the chair plopping down in front of Stevonnie, the can thumping against their right fist until they took the can into their left. “Thank you,” they said, stepping in and taking a seat. They gave it a careful spin, just to make sure it worked. “So this is the news room?”

“It is indeed!” Wangari said, retrieving her chair and sitting in it backwards to show her casual yet engaged nature to the new kid. She hoped her smile didn’t look as forced as it felt. “Where we collect all the information the school needs, arrange it into text format, add pictures and stuff, and, you know, print… newspapers! That’s what they’re called! Also handbills occasionally when there’s a play or an event or something!”

Stevonnie nodded, opening their drink at last. “Cool.”

“Very. Say, Stevonnie, could you give us a second? We were just a little bit busy when you arrived, but thanks to Joanna’s quick thinking you are now invited into our room and I must host you, giant American teenager who almost killed and then revived Sarah Bernhardt.”

“I – sure? Sorry for intruding, I just –”

“It’s fi-i-ine!” Wangari said, deploying her wand. “We’ll just be a second. Won’t be long at all.” She uttered a spell and a little green tickle of force pushed Stevonnie out the door and slammed it shut.

She turned to face her contingency and said in a harsh whisper, “We have to encrypt every last megabyte of those videos. We can’t let them stay online where people can see. Sarah damn near killed them over it! Sarah is _ not _ the most technologically adept person at this school! We can’t put the new kid in danger by letting them just keep all those pictures and videos up!”

“I agree,” Joanna said, “and I’d like to apologize for –”

“Shhh!” Wangari said, putting her finger on Joanna’s lips. She blushed furiously and made a happy little noise. “But we have to be casual about it. Can anyone here be casual about it?”

“Sure,” Kimberly said. “But what in the emerald flickers of the Green Flame are we gonna actually do about it? If the new kid is just lying constantly about who they are, if we tell her we know her secrets, they might think we’re gonna snitch. I’ve read this deconstruction of detective stories, it doesn’t end well for the old biddy who confronts the murderer.”

“Then what are we gonna do to break the news?” Wangari said.

“I have an idea,” Joanna said, blissfully.

* * *

I sat there with a drink in my hand for longer than I knew what to do with. I took a sip and got shocked by something that was kind of like grape soda and kind of not. It tasted like grape soda that had a lot on its mind.

I was finished drinking when the door opened again. Wangari peeked her head through, her orange afro compressed between door and frame. “He-e-ey,” she said, “we’re a little busy, but, hear me out… you wanna hang out, right?”

“Yeah!” I said. “I mean, I guess I do. We haven’t talked since we first met and I’ve been thinking about you and, well, you know... it’s been kind of a slow week, and…”

“Yeah, yeah, I get you,” Wangari said. “How about we meet up at the Dry Pool i-i-i-n exactly one hour? It’s in the art building. It used to be used for water performances before, uh, stuff you don’t need to worry about.”

I nodded. “Sure, that sounds great.”

“It’ll be a real romp. Get ready for a good time!” Wangari said a quick farewell and closed the door.

I shrugged. Witch stuff.

The door opened again and Wangari magicked the chair back inside. “Come alone,” she said, and closed the door again.

I crumpled the can flat between my hands. Well, I might as well freshen up a bit, I thought. It might be a party. I could use a party, too.

* * *

It was four PM in the UK, and 11 AM back in the States, in Delmarva particularly, and by the way, it was 10 AM in the country of Colombia where Centipeedle lived. Amethyst had drawn the short straw, and so had been forcibly volunteered to check on Centipeedle. She had been edgy and guarded last week when they had first checked on her; she and the rest of her beast buddies had erupted in power and accidentally chewed or melted large chunks of the destroyed Gem ship, necessitating repairs.

Today, Centipeedle was beating the shit out of a deer, clenching her mandibles around its hind legs and just smashing it against a large boulder near the ship.

Amethyst watched Centipeedle thrash the deer into a bag of meat and cracked bones, leaving muddy-colored smears of gore across the rock. The remains of several other deer and a bear were piled at the base of the rock. “Jesus, dude,” she said, entranced, “you’re really fuckin’ mad today.”

Centipeedle spat the deer out at last, splashing it across the rock. She reared her bulk into the air, drew back, and puked a gout of bright green acid onto it, melting the pile of remains and a good chunk of the boulder into a slurry of silicate and guts.

“Hurts,” she said.

“She” being Centipeedle.

“...wait,” Amethyst said. “Did you just – did you just talk?! Holy crap, the guys gotta–”

Centipeedle bashed her head against the rock.

“Woah, dude, hold on!” Amethyst said, running for ‘Peedle. “You got a gem in there, girl, you don’t wanna–”

“Yes!” she said, pointing her head at Amethyst and opening her spiky beak wide, revealing her gem nested at the entrance to her throat. “Want… to die!”

“No, no no no no,” Amethyst said, jumping on the rock. She cursed and hopped from one foot to the other as the remaining live acid bit through her boots. “Listen, dude. When you feel like biting the big one, nine times out of ten, it’s just ‘cause you don’t wanna feel like you do right now. You’re feelin’ pretty sucky right now, right?”

Centipeedle nodded.

Seven sweet crystal space mamas, Amethyst thought, I wish Steven was here.

“Alright. What’s your flavor of suck? What hurts right now?”

“...head…” Centipeedle lowered her head to Amethyst’s level. “Memory… hurts. I hear… the Voice. I feel it. Like I’m there.”

Amethyst stroked her mane. “That’s rough, pal. Tell me about it.” Also, please keep talking because this is really super convenient compared to all the screaming and acid-spraying.

Centipeedle clicked her beak. “Hurts. Ran away. Not… fast enough. All gone. The voice…” She looked at Amethyst, which entailed Amethyst looking right down the barrel of her acid-spraying organ. “Where is Steven? I… I remember Steven…”

“Steve left us a bucket of his spit, I can rub some on ya, see if I can… one sec…” She dug around in her gem and pulled out her cell phone. “I’m gonna call Pearl and see if we can’t get you some.” She leaned her head against the phone and wished again that Steven was here. Maybe shipping him and Connie off to Europe was a bad idea after all.

* * *

Mayor Nanefua Pizza addressed the gathered crowd in front of the statue of Former Mayor Dewey. She tutted into the microphone, drawing a reflexive flinch of shame from all and sundry. “People of Beach City,” she said, “I am aware that the recent disaster was atomic in nature and not Gemish. But, it should go without saying, that preparation for a space disaster is not dissimilar to preparation for an earthly one!”

“Yes, Mayor Nanefua,” the crowd said, on average.

“Look at this fine statue!” she said, pointing behind her. Former Mayor Dewey’s head had been blown clear off his shoulders. “Dynamitin’ the old mayor! That’s no way to show civic pride. And the logic in it! ‘Oh, the bombs are about to fly, so I must prove my masculinity by throwing a stick of dynamite at the mayor statue!’ And before you say, ‘but Mayor Nanefua, how do you know it was a person of masculine persuasion?’ And again I tell you: the police must absolutely get upon the case of Dynamite Adam.”

“But he has dynamite!” Police Officer Kent said.

“And do we not have live-in superheroes?” Nanefua said, gesturing to Pearl standing by her side, who curtseyed. “Which leads me to the main part of this town meeting–”

Pearl’s head shook in short, violent pulses. “Oh, excu-mmmm-se me, Mayo-mmmm, I need to a-mmmmm-swer this.” She performed a ballet ballon behind the statue and drew her vibrating phone from her gem. She knelt and whispered into the receiver: “Hello?”

“Hey, Pearl,” Amethyst said, “Centipeedle’s in a bad way and she wants some of Steven’s spit. Also, she’s freakin’ talking, people! She’s feeling so crappy she is speaking words that I can hear and understand!”

“Oh–goodness!” Pearl said. “Listen, I have something important to do for Beach City. I promise I’ll be over as soon as I can. Or I can… send Steven. No, of course I can’t. Garnet, that’s who I’ll send. Just a moment!”

“Can-do, Pearl,” Amethyst said.

Pearl dialed up Garnet.

* * *

Garnet answered her phone. “Garnet speaking.”

“Garnet!” Pearl said. “Please, I need you to–”

“I’m busy,” Garnet said, crushing the phone to plastic flinders. She dropped it into the blazing pit of magma in the Burning Room.

In her other hand, she squeezed Bismuth’s bubble, popping it and catching Bismuth’s gem. She took a few steps away from the magma, set the gem on the ground, and took a seat at the edge of the burning pit.

It wouldn’t be long.

* * *

Pearl peeked around the edge of the statue, beckoning Nanefua over. Nanefua snuck over and held her hand to her ear. “I’m listening.”

“Miss Mayor,” Pearl said, “I hate to be a bother, but I absolutely must return home. A dear friend of ours is in need of assistance.”

Nanefua sighed. “I understand. It damages my ability to protect my people from future disaster – but I understand. Surely now and again these things must happen.”

Pearl pursed her thin lips. “...I’ll… try and make arrangements,” she said, and called home.

* * *

Peridot was watching Steven’s TV. Nothing exciting, nothing that she even had a good time watching, just the very simplest of computer-simulated entertainment intended, as Steven once explained, for the most neotenic of humans. There was precious little shipping in this world of costumed dogs who tended to small civil crises.

There was a commercial break, and an elderly human explained the benefits of a certain company’s life insurance compared to other companies’. The concept of life insurance made Peridot unhappy. Human life was already upsettingly brief. Seventy years, on average? Steven had told her that once when she asked why Old Man Jimmy couldn’t make any more appearances after the ‘96 season. The idea that the fascinating people of Camp Pining Hearts would be dead before the century was out, that all her favorite stories could flourish only so long, made her weep hot and bitter tears.

It took her months to come to grips with the briefness of human lives, and even now, when she was alone too long, she remembered it against her will, casting a gray shade over her time with Steven and the people of Beach City. Lapis Lazuli had left not long ago at all, and she had taken their home with her, and this new pain was still raw.

Lapis had her reasons for leaving, yes. But Lapis had considered the risk of death – its certainty as she reckoned it – and the yawning emptiness, and she had chosen emptiness. The universe was too vast to comprehend, and she had lost herself in it, on purpose. Peridot could search for the rest of her existence, until chance or war or entropy finally sent her to the yawning maw of the Ogdru-Jahad, and she would in all likelihood never come within billions of miles of where Lapis chose to isolate herself. At full burn Lapis could be in the intergalactic medium by now, coasting in what humans would recognize as an Alcubierre pocket, fleeing death at superliminal speeds in stasis until light graced her gem again.

Or she would burn forever, reaching nowhere, living in a trillion-year stasis until all that remained were bubbled keepsakes never to be awoken, moving forever away from the Earth that had tortured her for ages and nurtured her only briefly. Even if she awoke, even if she wanted to, she would be alone, eternally, until her energy faded at last, and in that endlessness, that emptiness, cradled only by the gentle motion of electrons, she would sleep forever.

Maybe she would dream about Peridot, the person who loved her–

–loved her.

Steven taught her the word “love.” She could hardly understand it. She had no experience with it before the wonderful people of Camp Pining Hearts unveiled it to her. She felt it first when Steven had shown her kindness when he had every reason to contain or destroy her. She lived it when she and Lapis and Pumpkin had their little home, their art, their happiness, for that briefest slice of time. She had only realized this after Lapis had left Earth.

The song from the ‘92 season finale was right all along. You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.

So she watched the costumed dogs solve small problems, and she watched the old man explaining how his company could properly compensate for the loss of a brief, irreplaceable life. Anything to keep her mind engaged, however limply, with something that wasn’t–

–wait, did the phone ring? When had it rung? Oh, right, just as the show started, ending only as the peacekeeper dog had discovered that his tooth had come loose. She decided that since this commercial break was doing nothing to distract her and doing everything to remind her of why she needed distracting, she moved to answer the phone at last.

After fighting with the human answering machine system – who else but humans would make a system where “7” meant “delete?” – she received an urgent message from Pearl about Centipeedle needing Steven’s spit.

“A ha! _A rescue!_” Peridot said, and ran for the spit bucket.

* * *

238,000 miles away, Lapis watched Peridot through the scrying network in the ancient Gem moon base. She was TK surfing toward the forest, balanced on the lid of the steel bucket Steven had drooled in for long, painful hours the week before, spooning mouthfuls of lemon candy into his mouth and recording the experience for posterity, and also YouTube hits, if she had to guess.

On the scrying screen, Peridot’s brow was furrowed, and she was saying something, though Lapis couldn’t read lips and couldn’t guess what it was.

She looked happy.

Lapis curled her legs closer to her chest. She first wondered if Peridot hated her for leaving, and then hoped it. Cowards weren’t meant for love.


	12. Sex Funeral

For my meeting with Wangari, I figured I needed to dress casual. I hadn’t seen anyone out of school uniform, but then, maybe they just had a lot of school uniforms and saved their personal clothes for special occasions. I was new here, you know? Might as well test the waters. Worst comes to worst, a teacher nags my ear off about wearing the uniform. In my head, Steven was looking forward to that. It would let him identify the Dean at last.

(Didn’t we already meet the dean? Connie thought.)

(Wait, that nice old lady was the dean? Steven thought back. That can’t be. Deans are the bad guys.)

I decided to think over the finer points of college movies later. I had an art building to go to.

Somehow, the art building was easily the creepiest building on campus. Well, the weather hurt its first impression; it was already pitch black at 5 in the afternoon. There were floating fairy lights – like, actual magic fairy lights, or I think they were fairies – and I darted from the glow of one light to the next. I activated my gem light when I got close to the art building; the fairies seem to float away from it on purpose, leaving it an inky slab, a deeper darkness.

The building’s facade was thick with ivies; in reflections of pink belly-light I could see them climb up to three stories overhead. The front door had a bas relief of what looked kind of like a squid-devil, something with swirling tentacles for a face, sweeping wings, and a mock-Buddha body. I shouldered my way into the building.

The art building smelled old in a way none of the other buildings did. There was a ghost of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, which made me wonder both how long it had been around and how long it had gone without thorough cleaning. Or did they want the cigarette smell? Despite smelling older, the Art Building looked a lot younger. Connie had seen places like this in old 70s newsreels she’d watched in AP History.. The walls were bone-colored, the floor tiles marbled in orange and red swirls dappled with red. Student art hung on the walls, little sculptures and drawings and paintings. Lots of staring eyes.

I followed the signs on the walls for the Water Performance Arena. At least one of the signs had DRY POOL pasted over them, but not all of them. I marched up the last hallway leading to the pool, catching a whiff of sandalwood incense.

Huh. I pushed through the door.

The dry pool had once been an Olympic-size swimming pool. Now it was drained, which I guess is why it was called the “dry pool.” The floor of the pool had a mural or mosaic of some sort, something that looked like the Creation of Adam but with fewer people and more monsters. There were collapsed bleachers pushed into the walls on either side of the pool, and… okay, I can only dance around it so long.

There was a band set up on the far side of the pool. They wore costumes and masks, so I couldn’t tell who they were, but there was a drummer, a bassist, lead guitarist, somebody with a tambourine… you know, a band. Red candles lined the pool.

As I crept into the room, [the band began to play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0cRnREFamI), and a spotlight shone on a person-sized lotus waiting at the deep end of the pool. Well, I had my wand, and I knew I could blow a big hole into things if nothing else, so if it was a weird assassination attempt they were gonna have an excellent time of it.

I held my breath and walked at pace to the deep end of the pool. The tile walls gave the band’s music an echoing, melancholy tone, like I was walking into a flashback in a movie. The lotus began to twitch as I approached, and I wondered what kind of plant-themed villain was about to slouch out and kick my ass.

The petals peeled open, revealing Wangari in a long golden dress. A belt of black and red beads was cinched around her waist, silver jewelry dangled from her afro and glinted up her right arm. Her patches of red eye makeup were full-on 80s eyeshadow in tones of scarlet. She had her gaze angled at the floor until I got to just within arm’s reach; then she looked up, held out her hand, and said, just above the sound of the band, “ _ Enchente _ .”

“Hello,” I said, looking at her hand.

“Care to dance?” she said.

“Oh? Oh! Yeah, a dance would be cool!” I looked myself up and down. “I think I’m a little underdressed for this.” I’d come dressed in a parka, pajama pants, and snow boots, because it was entirely too dang cold to bother going bare-footed. Pretty sure it was wanting to snow, anyway.

“Do you have a Cinderella wand?” Wangari said, pulling a specialized wand from her lower back like a lady ninja pulling a ninja knife. “I can set you up.”

“Oh? Cool!” I said, striking a T-pose. “I was wondering about the dress. You did say your mom was a florist, right?”

“I’m a flower lady’s daughter,” Wangari said, “as sweet as holy water.  _ S’habiller. _ ”

Pale blue sparkles climbed up my outfit. With a soft  _ poof  _ my plain outfit turned into a pink tuxedo with a crinoline skirt and, judging from the sudden sharp clicking of my heels against the stone, glass slippers.

Less uncomfortable than you’d think!

Wangari flashed a shiny smile at me. Her teeth were like something out of an ad for expensive dentistry, other than her prominent and sharp-looking canines. I felt a faint stirring of paranoia. (Maybe it was the lack of sleep. I’d clocked a record lack of sleep even after Diana sanctified everything for me.)

“Well?” she said, holding her hand out again. “Relax. It’s just you and me and the band. Let that tense feeling at the back of your head just melt away. Take my hand. Let’s dance.”

I did. Her hand was tiny in mine, the paler shade of her fingertips and palm ticklishly soft. My hand felt like miles of slippery, crunchy calluses in hers.

I could feel Connie taking a step back in my own head. Steven nudged to the forefront of my subconscious. (Semi-conscious?)

“Eyes on me, now,” Wangari said. “Do you have moves, kind Stevonnie?”

“I do,” I said, feeling a smile come on. The nervousness was breaking down, at last.

“Please teach me,” she said.

Well, I taught her.

* * *

Bismuth cracked the neck of the beer bottle clean off and flicked it at the magma pool. Foam rushed down her slablike fist and columnar arm; she knocked back the rest with the ease of a shot of fine whiskey. She threw the bottle behind her into the pool, then pulled the next from the pack. “Crazy Lace too, huh?” she said.

“All of them,” Garnet said. She sat by the melting pool, its heat blazing at her back. There were powerful enchantments keeping the magma in place and secure; even here the heat was not boiling but soothing, like a sauna. Bismuth, always the temperature-resistant one, could bathe in magma so long as she kept her gem above the waves, and she did.

Right now, though, Bismuth was busy working through her second twelve pack of Stella Artois.

When Amethyst drank, it was whatever swill she could buy in bulk for cheap. When Pearl drank, and alcohol was the only thing she could ever find palatable, it was champagne, and always too much. If she were human, she might be called an alcoholic. No more Rose; no more safe drinking; no champagne in the house. When Garnet had occasion to drink, Stella was her drink of choice, one bottle at a time considered carefully, in memory of Bismuth, who loved ale and mead and all its sister-drinks. She was more than happy to sacrifice all her current stock to welcome Bismuth back once more.

“Goddamn,” Bismuth said. Amethyst taught her that one the last time Bismuth was free. She took an instant shine to it. “Everyone. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We did,” Garnet said. “We merely spared you the finer details. Perhaps we would have gotten around to it had your return not been interrupted.” She took a puff on her joint. It was her own strain of marijuana, bred over centuries of hobbyist cultivation. She called it Rose of the Stars. It had just been added to Leafly three months ago, and its early reviews were positive. It was the pride of her artistic endeavors.

Bismuth grumbled, and downed her next bottle in one long chug. She balanced the dead soldier on her fingertip, staring at it, feeling the last remains of moisture drip down to her knuckles. “What happened?” she said. “How did those Upper Crust sonsabiches do it?”

Garnet took an extra-long drag, held the smoke inside the hollow of her body for longer than necessary, and breathed it out slowly, like from a chimney. “It will bring you no joy to know.”

“Izzat what Sapphire is tellin’ you?” Bismuth said. She stomped over to the melting pool and stepped in, the thick molten rock parting around her bulk as she settled in up to her waist. The recessed gem in her chest glinted eerily in the burning light.

“It is,” Garnet said. She turned around, dipping her feet in the magma, then slipping in down to her knees, sitting on the edge of the pit. Ruby conferred some levels of heat resistance to Garnet, but nowhere near what the Forgemaster enjoyed. To Garnet’s skin the magma was a test of patience as much as it was a relief for aching holographic muscle. “I haven’t been seeing as much future as I used to. Even now it’s brief, sketchy. But I see nothing beautiful coming from this conversation.”

“Well,” Bismuth said. “If it’s all bad either way, I might as well know.”

“Alright.” Garnet dropped the remains of her joint into the Burning Pit and pulled a second out of her sapphire gem. “I’m sorry for this.”

* * *

Some of the highest ranking Homeworld Gems had left the planet. The rest had doubled their efforts to battle the Crystal Gems. Things had become untenable. Against Garnet’s advice, Rose Quartz confided in her human lover, the witch Achariya, the Voice and Soul of Mantorok. She in turn gathered the finest sorcerers of the young specie of Man, and through the warp pads and captured Homeworld craft, transported them to what would one day be called the Gem Battlefield.

The Crystal Gems made their presence known, and Homeworld responded in force.

The battle had begun before the sun rose that terrible day. The sun was now setting, and though the battle had its crests and troughs, it had never truly stopped. Now it was at its lowest point. Garnet fired off her left fist at a Homeworld scout flier that had dared to interrupt the ritual; the flier detonated, the Homeworld gem glittering in red sunlight as it fell to the trampled field below. It would survive, Garnet thought, and she returned to Rose Quartz, crossing the many yards of distance in a few mighty leaps.

The Crystal Gems formed a defensive perimeter around the Children of Mantorok. Their warriors and battle-magi were gathering their strength, sharing meager rations or stealing precious minutes of sleep. The leaders of the ritual, nine sets of three witches apiece, were still casting their spell, the spell which had begun the night before and continued without rest into the day. They were exhausted, their hands blistering on their forked staves.

At the head of the ritual were Achariya; her understudy, Samnang, second-finest of the human magic-users; and Idunn, the chief sorceress of the local human culture. She had extended her peoples’ full hospitality to the foreign magic-users, even though they worshiped different gods and came in the company of the hated  _ lysdjevel. _

Rose Quartz and Pearl welcomed Garnet into their circle, a mirror to Achariya’s own triumvirate. “They’re almost complete,” Rose Quartz said. “We just need to buy a few more minutes.”

“I doubt we have them,” Garnet said, looking over her shoulder. Across a trampled field laden with fallen weapons, the only signs of life were Homeworld and Crystal gems fetching their fallen sistren to take them back to shelter, perhaps to fuse with them to hasten their healing. Their war-machines hung in the air miles overhead, burning energy in exchange for mass to repair their damage and charge their weaponry.

“If they open fire on the witches,” Pearl said, “it’s all over. We’ve lost too many already…”

“Humans are so very fleeting,” Rose Quartz said, her eyes glistening with tears. “And they have laid their lives down for the sake of our freedom. We cannot lose and we cannot ask them to sacrifice more for our sake.” She looked between Pearl and Garnet. “I have an idea.”

“Yes?” Garnet said.

“We will force their hand, and give them a target they can’t ignore.”

In spite of herself, Pearl beamed. “You mean…?”

Rose Quartz took her hand. “Yes. Let’s show them the strength of our love.”

Garnet took Rose Quartz’s. “Rose Quartz, if it all goes wrong, if this is the end… I would change none of it. I die gladly if it means dying free.”

“Let’s go make our own future,” Rose Quartz said, kissing her forehead. Garnet felt her fear – for she felt a great deal of it – ebb, tucking into a corner of her mind. She could, for the moment, ignore that every last future she saw terminate into a column of white light.

Those last moments were worthy of painting, of statuary, of epic poems and songs. Rose Quartz’s command spread through the Crystal Gems, who formed a protective phalanx before the master witches; behind them, human warriors bore their spears and bows and slings, their blasting-rods and runes and words of power, their psionic mutations bleeding energy into the cooling evening air. The sun was at their backs, and at the fore of the army stood Rose Quartz, Pearl at her right hand, Garnet at her left.

The Homeworld war machines descended, weapons charged and aimed in their direction. Homeworld warriors took their matching positions, Rubies and Amethysts piling together into five-strong war-fusions visible from across the battlefield. The wind blew vicious and icy, the breath of the void.

Without a word, the leaders of the Crystal Gems held hands and danced, a twirling dance as if around an invisible maypole; at the end of it Rose Quartz threw her allies, friends, lovers, into the air, and leaped up between them. They glowed, they grew, and their fusion landed daintily before the Crystal Gem army to thunderous applause and chanting.

Baying Hematite stood head-and-shoulders all but the most titanic of Amethyst fusions. Garnet’s sunglasses became a glass domino mask framing both pairs of eyes and Pearl’s gem. They shuffled forward, their lower pair of arms holding up their massive ball-gown, their upper conjuring and forming their weapon, a tsukubo whose business end was formed by Garnet’s interlocked gauntlets capping Pearl’s spear, the spiral point becoming three rake-tines with Rose’s shield forming a webbing between them.

From across the battlefield, Homeworld sounded its displeasure with a litany of indistinct slurs. It was a cacophony. Gems fell out of rank to rush the walking blasphemy before them. The war machines descended, taking aim at Baying.

And so Baying Hematite sang: “Oh, oh, oh-oh-oh –”

A hail of plasma, of chemical missiles, of old-fashioned magnetic-discharge slugthrowers, of black magic ripped from the brains of alien sorcerers after the genocide of their planets, formed a glow brighter than the setting sun, and with a sweep of Baying Hematite’s rake, all crashed against a mighty bubble shield that took every last kiloton of punishment and kept solid.

“Stronger than you,” Baying Hematite sang.

Homeworld shrieked in collective fury and in unison charged.

An indigo light sprang from the center of the circle of witches, piercing the sky. The color spread across the starry sky like spilled wine.

“ _ Antorbok _ !” chanted Achariya, her voice echoing like a peal of thunder.

Around her, the gathered witches and human soldiers beat their staves on the ground, clattered spear against shield, and chanted “ _ Pargon! Pargon! Pargon! _ ”

“ _ Redgormor _ !” said Achariya.

Now even the Crystal Gems joined in, Baying Hematite thumping the earth with her rake:  _ “Pargon! Pargon! Pargon!” _

“MAN-TO-ROK!” shrieked Achariya, and she plunged the tines of her blasting rod-rod into the ground.

The land roiled as if the earth were a thin sheet over a tempestuous sea, knocking over or checking the charging Homeworld gems. The ground split, and Mantorok was there.

* * *

Garnet dropped the remains of her joint into the burning pit.

“You’ve never seen a witchgod,” Garnet said.

“I was sort of bubbled at the time, yeah,” Bismuth said. She had sunk into the magma up to her chest, just barely keeping her gem clear. Daring.

“I don’t know if I have the words to explain why Mantorok was so… disgusting.” She shuddered. “Pearl finds everything human disgusting. Maybe she could capture it better. I think about it, I try to match my feelings to my words… and it all falls short. You’ve seen dead things. You’ve worked with corpses before.”

Bismuth nodded.

“Mantorok was an ocean of corpsemeat. Its eyes were the cloudy eyes of dead things. The only things alive about it were that it was moving… and making sound. I hesitate to call it ‘singing.’ But it sang. I  _ hated _ it.” She clenched her fists hard enough for the joints to crack ominously. “The Earth of Rose Quartz was supposed to be alive, was supposed to be nurturing. How could this be the god of the Earth herself?”

* * *

Baying Hematite flickered, but held steady. The Crystal Gems needed only to stand back and watch Mantorok protect His Favored Ones.

Ropy limbs of meat and teeth threshed the battlefield. Few were simply poofed away; many were not merely smashed into stasis but had their gems shatter in the coils and maws which seemed to be the entirety of Mantorok’s corpus. At the center of the mass, ringed by the largest and most vivid of eyes, was a mouth wide enough to rest a village in, and it spewed out sticky tongues to drag Homeworld ships in to be devoured. They all tried to flee, all to no avail; the magic which heralded Mantorok’s arrival blocked their escape.

It was beyond foul.

“Is this it…?” Baying Hematite muttered. It was all any of them could think, Garnet or Pearl or Rose Quartz especially.

It was then that one of the humans shouted, something Baying could not hear from her proximity to Mantorok’s feast and the distance of her head to the ground. Nonetheless, soon the light that shone through Mantorok’s shield became visible, a trio of starbursts that were growing closer by the second.

Baying Hematite took a deep breath and began to sing. The part of her which was Rose Quartz poured her all into the construction of a shield great enough to encompass the entirety of the Crystal Gems and their human allies. Whatever it was, it was nothing compared to the strength of their love.

The Crystal Gems, grateful for having been saved by their human allies, paid no attention to Samnang elbowing his way between the Crystal Gem phalanx. He raised his own blasting-rod and cast his own spell.

Garnet did not remember it, could not have heard it; but for your edification, I, one of two authors, will tell you what he said:

“ _ Nethlek. Pargon. Pargon. Aretak. Pargon. Pargon.  _ Ulyoth.”

Blue light stabbed Baying Hematite in the back. She screamed, in shock as much as pain, and the spell forced her apart; Garnet and Pearl ate hard landings while Rose Quartz floated delicately to Earth.

“What was that?!” Rose Quartz said, shocked.

“I’m done with you,” Samnang said. Crazy Lace grabbed him by the arms and hoisted him off the ground while Biggs yanked his implement away none too gently.

“‘Done?’” Pearl said, drawing her spear and closing in on him.

Rose Quartz turned around and gathered her strength, stitching a new shield together, stretching it out wide before building it up.

“Homeworld is leaving this planet alone,” he said. “The attack was a trap. They were counting on you making a final stand. You’ve killed nothing that they cannot replace.”

“You sold us out?!” Garnet said, her voice rising high and out of her control. “They’re going to kill this planet and you sold us out to them?!”

“Your remains will be my payment,” he said. “I have made a very lovely mirror and I intend on making many more lovely things.”

“What have you done?!” Achariya said, bursting through the line of Gems who were now very unsure what to do. Those who had defensive powers and weapons conjured them, [facing the sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EC4yO5ckzE) and gathering humans under their protection. “Maw close around you, Samnang, why?!”

“Their gods are strong,” he said, and he closed his eyes and faced the sky.

Rose Quartz scooped Pearl and Garnet up in her mighty arms and dragged them under the thickest portion of her shield. “Cover your ears!” she said, and it was too late.

The Corrupting Light struck Mantorok’s shield, stopping briefly, until it burned through and cast its tripartite light upon the Crystal Gems and Homeworld Gems and humans and Mantorok all at once.

The world became a column of light, and the music of the beam was a perfect three-part harmony of hate.

When Garnet was unguarded, when she thought she was at peace, when the timeline was rolling along and the worst future fate was simply the ever-present looming threat of false vacuum collapse, she remembered the voices.

_ OTHER-FUCKER, DISGUSTING, HIDEOUS, CASTE-MIXING WHORE _

_ FILTHY TRAITOR HATED BY GOD BURN IN HELL FOR YOUR SIN _

_ CRAVE DEATH AND NEVER TASTE IT SOULLESS CRAWLING INSECT _

Those were the first three. The voices of the Diamonds, Yellow, Blue, and White, shrieking in her ear all at once, ceaselessly. There were other accusations, other pejoratives; they never ran out.

Rose shrieked, Pearl wailed, and Garnet realized only later that she had screamed as well. The noise was lost to the collective shrieks of the Crystal Gems and their human friends. The noise of that was lost to the burning crackle of the Light; and the Light itself was nothing compared to the voice of the Diamonds.

Outside of Rose's shield she saw human shapes burn and peel apart, wrench and contort; she saw Gems molded into new shapes by abuse and self-hate; she felt the Light creep into her, felt the voices in her ears howling for her mind. Below the shade of Rose's shield they would not win out; and as their pejoratives never ended so too would they try forever to destroy her.

After an eternity of agony, Garnet slipped into blessed unconsciousness.

* * *

“Goddamn,” Bismuth whispered.

Garnet doffed her sunglasses and dropped them into the burning pool.

“The sunlight woke me up,” she said.

* * *

Garnet awoke, as the poet may say, face-down in the mud. The stink of destroyed bodies had been unbearable the day before. This was worse. The mud, she saw, as her consciousness settled back into her holographic body, was a vulgar purple color, soaked not with water but with a tide of blood. Mantorok’s, she supposed, and hoped that it was dead.

Around her, the fields were serene and, mostly, intact. The ground was littered with weapons fallen where they dropped and the fragments of destroyed spacecraft. The grass had grown quite beautifully overnight, as if a whole season had passed. The blood of Mantorok was the blessing of Mantorok upon the Earth, she had heard.

Something was eating nearby, and doing so messily.

“Garnet?” Rose Quartz said.

Shocked, Garnet looked behind her to see Rose Quartz seated just a few steps away. Her face and dress were caked with filth; she was not so strong that she could simply withstand the light. “I didn’t want to touch you,” she said. “I cried over you. But you were still asleep. I didn’t want to… to risk it…”

“Risk it?” Garnet said, her voice strange in her throat. “Risk what?”

Pearl pushed herself up, or tried to. She fell back into the dirt with a soft huff, bereft of strength. Quietly, with gentleness only someone as huge and tall as Rose Quartz could master, Rose lifted her into her arms, stroking her head, resting Pearl’s head on her chest.

“The light,” Rose Quartz said, her voice trembling. “It… Corrupted us. All of us. We’re the last ones left.”

“No,” Garnet whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Rose Quartz said. “Garnet, I’m sorry I couldn’t…”

“Not your fault,” she said, standing up. “It was Samnang’s. Where is the little worm?”

Rose Quartz turned to the sound of eating. The two walked toward the source in swollen silence. Garnet had seen her fill of awfulness since the war began, and in that last second of innocence, believed she had seen all the horrors war had to offer.

Samnang had prepared for the Corrupting Light. Beneath his robes he had worn dozens of strings of runes in all kinds of colors and patterns. He must’ve been hedging his bets on what god could protect him against what force from on high. They had kept him intact enough through the Corrupting Light, but it seemed that they could do nothing against teeth, judging by the ragged stump of his neck and the eyeless gaze of his severed skull in the grass nearby. How pleasant that Achariya had cracked it open from the back, the better to leave a recognizable corpse.

“She killed him,” Rose Quartz whispered. “She waited all night. I stared at her… stared at all of them. They were… they were eating. All except Achariya. She was waiting. Waiting for him to…”

“...decaaaaaaay,” Achariya said, and at last tugged her head out from Samnang’s hollowed-out chest cavity. His liver was clenched in her muzzle.

She had a muzzle now; her jaw had distended into the shape of a rat’s jaws, muscle clinging to bare bone. Her eyes were wide and staring. Her arms had extended, her hands and fingers grown long and bearing razorlike talons. Her newly digitigrade legs ended in pitoned hooves.

The three of them stood in silence, Garnet and Rose Quartz watching in mute horror as Achariya messily chewed Samnang’s liver and gulped it down, punctured and tenderized but mostly whole. She shuddered and made an awful squealing noise.

“They did this,” Achariya said, “to kill  _ you _ . Didn’t they?”

Rose’s mouth moved, but no sound came out.

Achariya stood, rearing back onto her hooves. Her back was wrenched into a hunch. A tail, hairless and pebbly with new spinal joints, curled under her layered skirt. She shook rot-stained dreadlocks out of her eyes.

“It’s all your fault,” she said. “It’s all your  _ fault _ –”

In one blink she was rearing back; in the next she was on Rose Quartz, bowling her over, Pearl falling from her grasp. Achariya shrieked and squealed and slashed Rose’s face and neck with her killing talons. Garnet cleared the distance, conjuring her power fists, and struck Achariya in the side, sending her flying. She tumbled into the grass, trailing a spurt of thick, congealed blood from her side. In a second she scrambled away into the grass, and from there, out of sight.

Pearl awoke in misery. “Oh, stars,” she whimpered. “Rose Quartz? My Quartz? Where…” She gasped, covering her mouth.

Garnet helped Rose Quartz to her feet. She had been blinded, her face ripped to pieces by the occult strength behind Achariya’s talons. Her skin hung in bloodless rents, holographic muscle of pink light bland and glowing where she had been deprived. Gems don’t bleed. They sweat, they drool; if they drink, they piss; and they wept, as Rose Quartz wept, her tears hastening her recovery.

Garnet hugged her, resting her head on Rose Quartz’s shoulder.

Whimpering, Pearl pulled all three of them into a hug.

The Rebellion had failed.

* * *

It was a long time after the end of Garnet’s story before Bismuth spoke.

“So,” she said. “They never did anything to earn your trust back, huh? The witches, I mean.”

“No,” Garnet said. “Every time I investigated them, they had only discovered new ways to treat us like objects. I’ve done my part to cull their numbers, to discourage them from growing back, but they just keep… they just won’t lie down and die.” She twisted open her last beer and took a long drink. Bismuth had saved the last drink for her; it only seemed right.

“Well,” Bismuth said. “I’m here now. So you’re one Gem stronger.”

“Thank you,” Garnet said. She drank the rest of the beer, tossed the bottle at the Burning Pit. She somehow managed to miss.

“You know you were gonna miss that?” Bismuth said.

“No,” Garnet said. She waved her hand over her third eye. “I’m… burdened. There’s too much to think about. Too much to take in.”

“Yeah. Deep breaths, my friend.” Bismuth pat her on the shoulder. It was an oddly mild expression given they had just had sex on the warm, unyielding floor, and in fact were still nude.

Garnet blew out a long breath. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow, we plan in earnest.”

“Yeah. You do the planning.” Bismuth smirked at her. “I’ll get started on making us some weapons. Where should I start?”

* * *

“For starters,” Wangari said, “let’s talk about Facebook.”

“Face what now?” I said, mouth full of soup.

Right. After the dance, the band brought out a cauldron full of soup and a folding table and, well, I wasn’t gonna say no to food, especially now that it was dinnertime. It (the soup) was good and hearty, piled high with veggies, spiced with something I didn’t know what it was called, and with some meat that I didn’t know what it was, but it tasted pretty good.

“Facebook. You know, the content aggregator that’s stealing all your information and selling it to sketchy, sketchy people?”

“It does that?” I said. “Who makes it do that?”

“Just – Facebook does it. That’s what it does. Anyway, what I’m getting at is, friend Stevonnie, I’ve been looking online and stuff, and, well, I couldn’t help but notice that you were way too open with your information.”

“Open how?” I said, setting my spoon back in the bowl. I’d gotten halfway through it before Wangari had the chance to start talking. Maybe that was faster than decorum allowed, but whatever. You don’t dip a lady that deep–

(and why was that delicate scrape of her hair-jewelry against the pebbly ground so noticeable over the bass and drums? That impactful?)

–and then feel self-conscious about eating tasty food in front of her, you know?

“Well, for instance, Stev. I can call you Stev, right?” She nudged her food away and rested her head in her hand, elbow on the table.

“Sure, I guess.”

“I know we got off to a pretty harsh start, and that’s on me. When I come on hard, I come so hard you won’t believe the truth of your eyes.” She paused, holding her hand to her ear. What was she expecting to hear, other than one of the masked band people playing the violin for light dinner music? “So I backed off, gave you some space, even after the Cyclosa kill. I had plenty enough for my paper thanks to your mom ‘n pops-es, you know?”

I nodded. I also resumed eating.

“But, and I promise I wasn’t trying to pry, I went looking for your Facebook page, and I found it.”

I nodded.

“And through your videos and pictures, I found Pearl and Amethyst and Peridot and, uh, Lapis, I think, is what Peridot called the Ocean Stealer.”

Wait a minute. I downed my food with a sudden weightiness, like I’d forgotten to chew.

She held up her hands. “I know, it sounds scary that I know that much about you. But here’s the thing: I didn’t do a deep-dive into the Internet to find out who you really are. I just typed your name in and found your Facebook page. And then, everybody else’s.”

I felt my blood run cold.

“Witches and gemstone djinn have a complicated relationship, and it’s not a good one. The longer your information is up online, the more likely somebody is gonna find it, find out who you are, and then take action. And they’re not going to all be friendly like me.”

“Well… what am I gonna do?” I said, pushing my bowl out at arm’s length. My head swarmed.

“Good news,” Wangari said. “I have a crack team I can put to task, this very evening. We can run through all your social media and privatize and scrub everything as best we can. That way nobody at school is going to find out that you’re half-gemstone-djinni.”

“Half what?”

“Gemstone djinni. Smokeless fire? Tendency to get trapped in rings and lamps and stuff? Some call ‘em ‘dao,’ no idea if that’s a Gygax thing or for real.”

“Genies are real?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Of course it is.”

“So,” Wangari said, nudging aside her food bowl at last, “what are you, exactly?”

“We…” Well, that was an easy lie to capitulate on. “We’re called Gems. Capital G. We’re from space. We’re not genies. We’re not mag – I mean, we don’t have genie magic, but we have Gem magic! Totally different.!”

“Well, you’ve been mistaken for djinn, historically,” Wangari said. “Can you just stick a Gem, uh, gem, into something and make a magic item?”

“Yeah, you can. Lapis was trapped in a mirror for millennia before I busted her loose.”

Wangari blinked. “You unleashed the Ocean Stealer on a helpless Earth?”

“Well – don’t put it like that! She’s a nice person! She just runs a little hot sometimes.”

Wangari leaned back in her chair. “You know, I trust you, but also, I don’t think anybody else is going to. ‘She’s cool, trust me’ didn’t save Croix. I know you’ve had a pretty cold reception at Luna Nova so far, and if word gets out you pal around with some of our ancient enemies slash energy sources, people aren’t going to take it well. It’s bad enough they’ll take it out on you, but it’ll be worse if they try and take it out on your friends and family.”

“They will…?”

“They might,” Wangari said. “And I wanna stop it. I want to help. Like I said, I know some people–” She thumbed at the band. One member waved, another sort of made a coughing noise. “–and together we can help you out. We’ll encrypt all your stuff, make it hard as hell to find, so that none of the technologically illiterate witch population of Earth can easily suss out who you are and who your family are. Just give us the word and your passwords, and we’ll set you up.”

I looked at my soup bowl and wished I was still hungry. “Why did everything get so much harder and weirder when I got to Luna Nova?” I said. “I just wanted to make friends and learn magic.” That’s right. Lie to her. That was a lie, right?

“Hey,” Wangari said, softly. “I know the feeling. I thought that witches would’ve put all their prejudice behind them once they got pushed into the margins themselves. Nope. They just drew new lines, made their world even smaller. And right now that means that your simple act of being honest about your people is like a big target painted on your back. I really wish I remembered who said it, but, ‘Honor is like the hawk, sometimes it must go hooded.’” She pushed away from the table, stood up, and walked over to me, leaning down a little so she could look me in the eye. “They’re not ready yet. But they will be. I’ll make sure.”

After a moment, she jolted in place.

“Oh, crap, you’re from the US. Right. I don’t mean I’ll shoot up the school. I mean show them who you really are.”

I blinked. “Wangari…” I said.

“Yeah?” she said.

“When I tried to talk to you earlier, I was gonna ask if you could help me be cool. You know, make friends.”

“Huh. Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then! I guess it must be the golden thread of Fate tying us together. Let’s get you started on the right foot.” She took my hand and, once I got the hint, stood up. “We’re gonna make you and yours safe, we’re gonna get you into the good graces of Luna Nova, and finally, after centuries of struggle, the healing can begin. Stevonnie Universe-Maheswaran, if that is your real name…” Wangari took a knee. “Would you do me the honor of giving me all your internet passwords?”

I considered my words for about a tenth of a second.

* * *

“Oh, Jesus Christ, no,” Amethyst said as she stumbled off the warp pad.

“But Amethyst,” Pearl said, starting to follow her before she nearly tripped over her own foot. “Agh – but what if the capybaras don’t work?”

Amethyst made a beeline for the kitchen. “Well, they ate half the capybaras already, they can just eat the other half. And then maybe they’ll be full.”

Pearl swooned onto Steven’s house’s downstairs couch. “I’d browbeat you for leaving the task half-done… but, I don’t want to be there any more than you do.”

“Amen to that, sister,” Amethyst said, pouring a 1:1 mix of milk and tequila into a bowl of that one cereal Steven tried once that was like, not cereal, but a box of like sixteen long whole-wheat biscuits you stacked into the bowl two or three at a time. When fresh, they had the flavor and texture of fake hay made from styrofoam, and had been aging into a crusty chunk in the two years since Steven bought them. They only partly absorbed the milk tequila, becoming crunchily soggy. Amethyst poured the entire mix into her mouth. “Mother  _ fucker,  _ that was not a fun time,” she said, chewing the noxious swirl of flavors. “Peri, what took you so damn long?”

“I was performing important research and missed your hail,” Peridot said, tele-perching the now only half-full bucket of Steven spit on a high shelf. Pumpkin yipped and jumped on her, trying to lick her face. “No, Pumpkin,” Peridot cooed, holding her pet at arm’s length, “no licking the blood off, it’s human blood. We can’t let you get used to the taste!” For Peridot, you see, was soaked head to toe in human blood.

“I know he’s doing something important, but…” Pearl sighed. “I just wish that Steven was still here. Or Connie. If we could get Lion to listen to us, that’d be fine enough. Or… um…” She glanced at Peridot. “Well. We could use some help around here.”

“But from who?” Peridot said.

The door to the inner temple opened, and Garnet stepped through. She smelled like weed, good beer, and molten stone. “Hello,” she said, adjusting her bodysuit.

“Where have you been?!” Pearl said, sitting up.

“Securing our future. It grows shorter, day by day.” She strode to the center of the living room. “The coming of the witch-bomb ushered in a new and potent threat the likes of which we have not seen in ages. We may need to take drastic action. The eyes of Homeworld are still upon us. We cannot win a war with two fronts.”

“So why pick the fight?” Amethyst said, hesitantly swallowing her two cheekfuls of debatable nutrition. “Witches ain’t done nothin’ to us yet. Let ‘em be.”

“I cannot,” Garnet said, voice firm.

* * *

I folded the piece of paper a third time. "You promise you won't do anything weird," I said.

As I said that, two streams of imagination poured out of me.

Connie imagined Wangari hunched over a keyboard, leaving in hackery backdoors, so that when I signed in next she'd get my updated password, and then spend late-night hours gaslighting all my friends and family into thinking I was being subverted into a pro-witch terrorist group so that they'd either cut all ties and leave me trapped in Europe forever, or try to drag me home while lighting everything on fire.

Steven imagined Wangari @ing all his social network pals and tagging herself in all his photos. Which somehow would edit her into them.

Wangari took the paper by its edges. "Not a single thing," she said, setting the paper with all my passwords on her desk. "We'll be in and out, discrete and delicate. By the time you have your passwords back you'll be so anodyne people will think you're a marketing bot."

"Yeah," said Kimberly, "tell her we're gonna make her look like a fake Amazon person. Great idea."

"'They,'" me and Wangari said simultaneously. "Jinx," Wangari said with a winning smile. "Okay, maybe just make you look kind of boring."

"Thanks," I said, breathing out. "I... guess I'm gonna go home or something. To my room, I mean."

My phone buzzed. I checked my messages and saw that Akko had sent me a text. It was a picture of the Luna Nova grounds. Akko was out of focus and off-center, so maybe she didn’t mean to show Diana creating a string of magic lights with her wand. The body of the text just said "GRASS PARTY : D"

"I think Akko wants to party," I said.

"I bet she does," Wangari said. "Don't leave 'er hanging, Stev!"

"Thank you again," I said, and left the room.

* * *

Wangari cracked her knuckles. "Alright, ladies," she said. "We have our specialties. I call Facebook and YouTube. Joanna?"

"I have Twitter on lock, m'am!" she said, saluting. "I can also do Instagram and Pinterest in a pinch!"

Kimberly shrugged. "Whatever's left, I guess. This is gonna take all goddamn night as it is, while Party Girl gets to –" She saw the look Wangari was giving her, sighed, and said, "While Party... uh..." Wangari mouthed a word. "...Person..." Wangari gave her a thumbs up. "...gets yet another big shindig thrown in her honor. ... Their honor."

"Because we answer to a higher calling," Wangari said. "The calling of journalistic integrity."

Kimberly groaned. "I hate when your morals align with mine." She entered the password for a Linkedin page for Connie Maheswaran. "Still. We're going to ask them about the location of the magical oasis of the Gemstone Djinn and they are gonna tell us as much as their geas allows."

"They said they're a gem creature from outer space," Wangari said.

"Obviously code."

In silence they hammered away at the rough task of encrypting four years' worth of social media activity. It was a heady, nurturing silence, right up until Wangari gasped in shock and pushed away from her computer, hands over her mouth.

"What in the hay...?" Joanna said, looking away from her machine.

Wordlessly, Wangari beckoned to both of her teammates. They scooted over in their seats and saw the person on Wangari's screen. Joanna whimpered into her hands. Kimberly swore.

Once she knew her allies had witnessed what she had witnessed, Wangari inched closer to her computer. She reached out, hand heavy on the mouse, and hit play. Phantasmal colors played across their faces in the dark room; onscreen, the Witchhammer stared at them.

The Witchhammer had figured in Joanna’s nightmares all her childhood. Kimberly had convinced herself she would never see by virtue of never being important enough to be murdered. Wangari had researched the Witchhammer extensively as part of a presentation in high school while researching “Waking the Tiger” phenomenon – the hysteria that grips a population and turns them against witches, real or perceived. She knew exactly what the Witchhammer had done, and how much blood poured copiously from those mighty hands.

The Witchhammer gave the camera a gentle wave. A ruby was embedded into her palm, red like stigmata. “Howdy, Steven,” she said.

“Hello, Garnet!” Steven said in the video. “In just fifteen minutes, you’re going to be part of a meep morp by the legendary partnership of Peridot and Lapis Lazuli! How are you feeling, Garnet?”

“I’m feeling quite reasonable, Steven,” the Witchhammer said, un-crossing and crossing their massive legs. “I am going to be standing still for fifteen hours while balancing birdfeeders on my nose and foot. Did I mention that I am going to be standing on one foot? For this is the arrangement I have been coerced into performing.” She smiled. “I embrace the challenge.”

“You heard it here, folks!” Steven said. “And I’m going to be filming the whole thing in fast motion, like that guy who did that movie about that building!”

“Andy Warhol,” Kimberly muttered, disbelieving. “ _ Empire. _ ”

“I’m sure that it will be riveting,” the Witchhammer said, lowering their opaque sunglasses and revealing a third eye, winking with it.

Wangari shivered, hugging herself. Joanna started crying. Kimberly bit her knuckle.

“Tulzscha burn us all,” Kimberly said. She reached over and exited the video. “How do they know the Witchhammer? Did she just drop in one day to visit?”

Wangari took control and did a little more browsing. “No,” she said. “The… the Witchhammer is, like, one of their moms.”

“Fuck me sideways,” Kimberly said, turning away. “The new kid is the Witchhammer’s monster baby.” She took a deep breath, held it for a long time, and exhaled shakily. “We gotta kill them. Every second that bitch is alive –”

“Kimberly,” Wangari said. “They had lots and lots of opportunities to kill us. To kill Akko, to kill Diana. To kill lots of people. And so far they have killed zero people. The Witchhammer doesn’t do the long game. She shows up, kills everybody she can, and leaves. The most she does is, like, get a lynch mob together to help. I don’t see a lynch mob. I don’t see anything but a confused, weird lil’ person who desperately wants to belong, who wants to be here and be a witch.”

Neither Kimberly nor Joanna had anything to say to that.

“Guys,” she said. “We can do what’s expected of us and try to kill them. We can force them out, make them fight us, and probably die doing it. Or. We can do the right thing.

“We can end the cycle of violence before it starts up again. We can show them how good we can be. Goddammit, this is the new age. This is the Age of Aquarius. This is the rebirth of magic. We can’t just fall back into the same  _ goddamn  _ cycle we always do. We’re gonna end it, you and me.” She took Joanna’s hand; then Kimberly’s. “The time is now, the place is here. The change is us.”

Joanna nodded, sniffling. “I believe in you, boss.”

“We’re all gonna die,” Kimberly sighed. “Alright. We make them at home. Fine. I’m doubling down on finding the Oasis, I’m announcing here and now.”

“You’re free to ask,” Wangari said. “But don’t be pushy.”

“I’ll try not to be.”

“Now,” Wangari said, finding the strength to return to her computer, “Let’s get back to business. We have to do the best job we can. Put your all into it. Let’s bring about a new age of peace.”

* * *

It was not yet time to make a move for the forge. For one, Bismuth needed time to think. For another, she needed discretion; Garnet wasn’t ready to reveal her to the Gems just yet, and she agreed with that. They hardly came to the basement, Garnet explained, save for destroying the most far-gone of Gem artifacts and haunted and cursed things. It was too painful to be among their old friends laid low and placed into stasis.

So she had time and privacy, and she thought.

She drew a diagram of a human body on the ground, scratching with her iron-hard fingernails. It was a silhouette filled with many fine lines and smooth curving shapes: a map of veins and nerves, of organs. The brain in particular she had divided into the forebrain, the hindbrain, and the pineal gland, the little wet part that served the function of magic channeling in humans. Witches, in particular.

It had been a long time since she’d studied anatomy. Rose Quartz had asked her to help make armor to protect their witchish allies, and to best design armor she had to find out how human beings suffered. They had plentiful corpses to work with, and comparing her notes with those of necromancers and warlocks had taught her a great deal.

Humans were fragile beasts. Almost everything on Earth was fragile compared to a Gem, admittedly, but Garnet claimed that they had improved their offense by a great deal since the old days. They had guns now, for one.

Well, then. Guns weren’t Bismuth’s favorite; quite the opposite, in fact. They lacked artistry. Like any weapon, guns could fill multiple roles in battle, but they were not as flexible in their roles as a melee weapon could: a pistol was not as versatile as a sword, a rifle not as versatile as a spear, a shotgun not as versatile as an axe – okay, actually, a shotgun was more versatile than an axe. But axes could do things shotguns were not ideal at.

Yeah, Homeworld had moved on to energy weapons, different sizes of laser and plasma. But Bismuth was a kinetics girl.

And the human allies they would make in the United Kingdom would prefer a familiar kinetic weapon.

So she analyzed her chart of human weak points, and thought of how best to make a gun to split them apart.


End file.
